Lit SOS: Save Our Skywalker, Luke Skywalker (v3)

Well, let me explain.

If someone fixed the Presidential Election and rigged the voting, murdering the opposing candidate, and then proceeding to start a war to prevent a recount....

Would you consider that a legitimate government?

Cause that's Palpatine in a nutshell.

 

If the lawfully elected Congress and Supreme Court went for it, than maybe.

Mace Windu admired Palpatine at the beginning of the war, in Shatterpoint. By the beginning of the RotS novel, he had serious misgivings.

 

Lord_Riven

I agree with you, LR. Luke didn't just choose the Light side by a "hair's breath" as Cclaims. Luke did make the correct moral choices in the OT. As you said, Luke chose death over the dark side both in TESB and RotJ. He was offered all of the power in the galaxy, and he refused it. I think he even made the right decisions in smaller ways in the films too. For example, when Obi-wan wanted him to leave with him to join the Rebellion, he first told him he couldn't...because he had made a commitment to his Uncle Owen, even though he didn't want to stay on Tatooine.

Throughout the Bantam era - we see Luke has been consistently making the right moral choices in terms of Light/Dark. With the exception of Dark Empire when he chose to serve the Emperor.

I agree. And even in DE, Luke wasn't evil. Though I felt it was a foolish mistake, Luke thought he had no choice but to learn about the dark side so he could defeat the Emperor. And he was more like an undercover agent for the Alliance while he was with Palpatine.

I strongly agree that to "have Luke stoop to something as low and simple as base revenge is utterly OOC". VERY! I truly feel it is the single worst thing that Luke has done in his life, and to do it now when he is a Jedi GrandMaster and has learned to control his emotions makes it even less likely that he would do such a thing.

AnnLouise

In those examples, Luke made the "right moral choices" without become a sanctimonious holier-than-thou. He didn't always succeed, but unlike Anakin who knew when something was wrong but would do it anyway, Luke remained true to his core values. Even if it meant chosing to fall down a chasm or toss away his weapon. These didn't come off as cheesy stunts; they were brave, difficult choices.

And doing the "brave, difficult" thing is what a hero does. Yet another reason why I really hated the vengeance killing. Luke is supposed to be the hero. Heroes who make such grave "mistakes" aren't heroes. Poor Luke has NOT been portrayed as a hero very much in LotF, and that really bothers me.

Charlemagne19

The Luke Skywalker in A New Hope is just a guy. Luke is a nice guy but he's not a hero until the very end of it.

I disagree, C. It was heroic (but foolish) to rush off to try to protect his guardians when he figured out where the Stormtroopers had gone. Granted, he was far too late, but he showed what he was made of in that scene. I think it was heroic to go off to rescue a princess too, instead of staying safe while Ben Kenobi took out the tractor beam. It was heroic (and resourceful) to swing across the chasm on the Death Star. It was heroic to volunteer for a likely suicide mission in an unfamiliar X-wing to protect Yavin IV.

The Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back is a cocky little snot.

That wasn't the way I saw him. Young and impatient, yes. He was also heroic. The Hoth scenes proved that, as did his willingness to leave the safety of Dagobah to rescue his friends, AND his willingness to face the second biggest, meanest bad guy in the galaxy.

I saw Luke's decision to jump as heroic. Luke was between a rock and a hard place. Rather than join the dark side and become a monster like Vader, he chose the Light and probable death rather than break his moral code. Sort of like the Christian martyrs who chose death rather than give up what they believed in.

As for wearing black in RotJ, so what? Even priests wear black. Black looks good on almost everyone. Yes, he TEMPORARILY choked the Gamorreans. He probably could have made a better choice here, but he was new at this Force stuff, so while I didn't like it, I give him a little leeway here. He didn't kill them and he didn't damage them. They had some pretty nasty-looking weapons, don't forget, and Luke had no weapons at all. As for Jabba, how many chances did he give that crime lord anyway? He did give Jabba the chance to negotiate peacefully, but he came prepared to move on to "aggressive negotiations" if

 

As for wearing black in RotJ, so what? Even priests wear black. Black looks good on almost everyone. Yes, he TEMPORARILY choked the Gamorreans. He probably could have made a better choice here, but he was new at this Force stuff, so while I didn't like it, I give him a little leeway here. He didn't kill them and he didn't damage them. They had some pretty nasty-looking weapons, don't forget, and Luke had no weapons at all. As for Jabba, how many chances did he give that crime lord anyway? He did give Jabba the chance to negotiate peacefully, but he came prepared to move on to "aggressive negotiations" if necessary. I doubt the Jedi of the PT would have done things much differently.


I already mentioned all the other heroes who wore black, color of clothes don't represent what type of character you are and also it was to demonstrate Luke's maturity.


I very much disagree. Luke is NOT an "emotional hot-head". Even in Sacrifice when he killed Lumiya, Luke wasn't written as emotional. That didn't come until after he found that he had killed the wrong person. The text even says, "As she straightened up, he (Luke) looked her in the eyes-calm-eerily calm-and swung his lightsaber in a single decapitating arc".

ROTJ pretty much shows Luke maturity and his calmness, I never seen him as a hot head.

 

RK_Striker_JK_5 :

Luke should've taken Mon Mothma's advice about the Order. She had experience of the Jedi closing themselves off and locking themselves in a literal tower. it would've been nice.

That's an excellent point, Striker! Mon Mothma was not only alive during the prequel era, she was an active participant. She would have had first-hand information about the Jedi. She should have been an invaluable resource for Luke. She should have been able to tell him a LOT about the Old Republic Jedi. You're right that she would have had experience of the Jedi removing themselves from the rest of the "normal" people. I can see how others would have felt that the Jedi seemed to have an eletist attitude from that, and might have been afraid of their powers since they didn't have real contact with them.

And I never said Luke should give up being a Jedi. I never said any of them should. Jedi merchant, Jedi pilot. Jedi architect. Go out into the real world during the day, and go back to the Temple/home at night. That should've been the path of Luke's Order.

And I really do like that idea. Unfortunately, it probably would work best in a galaxy which is relatively at peace, and in which there were a lot of Jedi.

And it's cool how he took down the AT-AT. Shows he doesn't need the Force as much as other Jedi.

Yes. I've always said that Luke is supposed to be a resourceful character. This quality came through loud and clear in the films and in many of the early EU books too. In most books now though, the way Luke has been written, he comes across as pretty clueless most of the time.
I wonder how Obi-Wan or Anakin would've done, or Mace. I mean without the Force, too.


Rouge77 :

Luke made to be the loyal retainer who tries to turn back the clock, because he thinks the new governments is illegal. Although he then goes on and declares his support for Niathal, which is kind of strange.

Since I still have to read most of Revelation, DOES Luke really declare his support for Niathal? Does he throw the Jedi behind her and allow her to control them? If so, that would be VERY disappointing!

Of course they do. That was one of the reasons why the Jedi who acted against the YV were rogues a significant part of the war, acting without Luke's permission, as Luke tried to appease NR leadership and other Jedi haters.

I don't agree with that, R77. Luke DID get very involved in trying to fight the YV in VP. He and the Jedi couldn't get the GA to support them and that's when things started to fall apart. He was even fairly active in Onslaught and then somehow, Luke was written as super-passive and very indecisive, which is what led to that rift in the Jedi Order.

When a more reasonable leader came to power, the Jedi worked again closely with NR-turned-GA.

Also because by then Luke had finally come to realize that he had been wrong not to be more proactive about the YV.

Yes, and Luke has his speech which confirms that. And all that is thrown out of the window in LotF, where the Jedi are the obedient servants of the GA government and do what Master Omas (and the military) tell them to do.

There really is a HUGE continuity disconnect between what Luke said at the end of TUF and what we see the Jedi doing and believing at the beginning of the DN trilogy, with no explanation given for it. I had forgotten that the Jedi were also working for the GA government at the beginning of that series as well. I really wonder what happened there?


NewStaryknight :

he was inactive during the Vong War because he, nor anyone for that matter, had ever got up against an enemy that seemed to be completly outside the force and therefore didn't have a good grasp on things

In my opinion, it doesn't matter whether Luke knew much about the YV or not. The point is that the YV were causing wholesale slaughter and massive destruction and taking over more and more of the galaxy. To me, the correct response is to STOP them and the

 

maybe they could retcon it that he was just appearing to look weak, and sneaking off on secret missions at night just like his old self. that's about all I can think of.

 

My interpretation of Luke, quite simply, is that he's a hero first and foremost. ANH will always be my favourite of the SW films, simply because it has a message quite unlike any others Luke's been involved in (sadly). Luke Skywalker is an everyday bloke, who dreams of reaching for the heavens but, in truth, is just your everyday guy. But the Force can even be hidden in an everyday desert-bloke, and even a Tatooine moisture-farmer orphan can bring down a Death Star. So for me, Luke's starting point is his 'everyday'-ness, but that he's a hero is essentially hardwired into his character.

In ESB, the saga then takes a twist. The everyday hero has a dark secret, an ancestry, and the overturner of Empires is taught by Masters of the Jedi. In RotJ, the theme develops out of it. The everyday hero must confront his past, including the darkness, and must emerg victorious on all fronts. To do so will cost him in the most painful ways, but he must hold on to his intrinsic goodness - his faith in people, despite everything. "Your feelings betray you" - hah! It is those feelings that saved him!

 

in NJO luke was still IMO a very strong character who i enjoyed reading about...
I've been reading LOTF as soon as each novel came out. and i have to say that other than caedus (UTTER FAILURE of a character) he is the character i am least enjoying reading about.. sure he's just dealing with Mara's death.. but he's been an absoloutely crap parent... a very poor leader of the jedi. and not the luke i grew up loving..
There was a scene at the end of revelation in which i got the impression that luke and ben were more.... friends.. than father and son.. and i dont mean best of friends. i mean. the guy who you spot in the street and say hi to and ask about his wife and kids and work.. end of..
the LOTF storyline has completely ruined the character that used to be the best in EU...

 

Perhaps the greatest sin of the EU right now is that it is no longer expanding the universe, but imitating. Not only that, but imitating badly.

A large part of the message of Revenge of the Sith was that the Jedi Order, while noble in its intentions, was flawed in some fundamental ways that the Sith could exploit. Yoda realized this when he failed to defeat Darth Sidious. Taking a cue from Qui-Gon, he realized that a new breed of a Jedi would need to come about to beat the new breed of Sith, a type of Jedi more in tune with the Living Force. Thus, the training of Luke Skywalker. Rather than take the usual "aggressive negotiations" approach to take out Sith, Luke tried to bring the good out of his father rather than strike the evil down. In doing so, Luke accomplished what the old order had failed to do. Obi-Wan confirmed that Luke, indeed, was the first of the new Jedi in his final parting words, and Luke went about the task of creating a new order far from the galactic capitol, training people from all walks of life...

...and we got the same damn prequel Jedi Order all over again! What's with that?! They're all wearing those uniform robes, getting shoehorned into the two lightsaber colors, wearing padawan braids, and since the old Jedi Temple was destroyed, they've been given a new, shiny state-sponsored temple on Coruscant built with taxpayer money!

It's disgusting the lack of creativity going on here. And if things weren't bad enough, we're getting a warped prequel repeat with characters being thrust into roles that they aren't meant for. Jacen Solo isn't Anakin Skywalker, Mara Jade isn't Mace Windu, Lumiya wasn't Palpatine, and Tenel Ka isn't Padme. (oh, you just can't make up that kind of humor.)

And then there's Luke. I don't know where they are going with him anymore. I don't even recognize the man they are describing. Sure, I remember Luke having an anger management problem in the films, but I don't remember him having a problem with decisiveness. It isn't a Skywalker trait, you know? I figured he'd learned his lessons and become a true Jedi Knight by now, seeing as he faced down practically the personification of evil in the galaxy and told him no, a path of almost certain death. Zahn had the right idea when he wrote TTT. Luke wasn't a great hero and Jedi in those books because he could pull off uber Force tricks and use a lightsaber really well. It was all about his attitude and accumulated wisdom, the patience he had learned and his willingness to reach out for the good in others. He could fight when he had to, but he chose his battles wisely, and he calmly accepted the situation, no matter how dangerous or hopeless it seemed to be. There's your Jedi Master. Sure, he'd have his mistakes here and there, but nothing like the catastrophe of the recent books.

 

Luke is FAR from inactive in the Dark Nest trilogy. I'm reading it again now. Just started the Swarm War this morning. Luke's been hands-on the whole time. Jets out to the Unknown Regions to deal with the YJKs when they abandoned their assignments to heed some call, actively pursues the Dark Nest when it is discovered. That's just in TJK. TUQ he's even more hands-on. Going and staying with the Saras Killiks on Woteba and hunting down the Dark Nest and Lomi Plo while he's there. Goes after the Gorog nest ship with just him, Han, the Droids, a Sullustan and an excitable Ewok. Thus far in TSW he's put his foot down with the Jedi Order and taken his rightful place as Grand Master despite serious misgivings from his sister and himself about the Jedi Order becoming a cult of personality focused on him.

The last thing I'd say of Luke in DNT is that he's inactive. Denning actually writes a really good Luke, I think. He's got some quirks I don't like... but he does well with Luke. The best Luke stuff in LOTF has been Denning's work. Plus the dude's lightsaber duels are second to none. He works in so much internal martial arts stuff that I can't recall really seeing anywhere else. Force-powered punches and kicks etc.

 

Granted, the Dark Nest trilogy Luke is alright. Hardly perfect, but passable. Of course, the whole thing about his doubts holding him back and that scene where he draws on his anger to, uh, cloak a ship and when he authorized torture for experimental purposes and...um, ok, so maybe he's not so passable there. I was more referring to the New Jedi Order and Legacy of the Force, in which maybe he's starting to be more active, but he's still out of character and a little bit out of intelligence.

 

In NJO, he was particularly inactive imo; and, worst of all, in SbS, where the reasons for the strike team just didn't add up.

 

Froggy, I can understand Luke using anger in the early parts of DNT to fuel his use of the Force. He did the same feat again in TUQ without using his anger. It was used as a plot device to return Luke and the entire NJO to Jedi orthodoxy. It's meant to be a disturbing element of Luke's character for us, and for him. Including the allowance of Cilghal mildly torturing a Gorog Killik. He was disturbed by his acceptance of it, and worse yet... by Cilghal's willingness to do it. The doubts thing even adds up for me, because he was doubting himself for even allowing the Jedi to follow along with the moral relativism of Vergere and Jacen. Plot point. Then the addition of Artoo revealing things about his mother and his father that he'd never seen before. You try not having doubts about your father that after you redeemed him from the dark side of the Force you idealize him as an example for the new Jedi. When you see a holovid of him cutting down Jedi younglings and choking out your Mom I think that would taint the pristine image you created for him in your mind for the last 30 years.

Out of everything that DR's done with Luke DNT makes the most sense and has him the most in-character. He's acting out of character in places and he notices it.

I don't know what happened with LOTF. Denning brought Luke back in DNT, and he was in on the round table plotting of LOTF and you gotta wonder what the hell happened. All I can think of is this... Luke's tiptoeing around only as a contrived means of stretching out a story that could have easily been done as a trilogy into a 9 books series. Almost everything about the Jedi, Skywalkers and Solos done in LOTF just smacks of that. It's lame.

 

I don't see the problem.

It's a big galaxy, they're Jedi. Luke has more important things to do.

 

Child
And doing the "brave, difficult" thing is what a hero does. Yet another reason why I really hated the vengeance killing. Luke is supposed to be the hero. Heroes who make such grave "mistakes" aren't heroes. Poor Luke has NOT been portrayed as a hero very much in LotF, and that really bothers me.

Right on there, Child! That scene where he murders Lumiya is supposed to be reminiscent of his father, but the problem is Luke isn't his father. They share a last name and some genes, but Luke doesn't do things he knows is wrong just cause he's angry. That whole scene was OOC.

I still think if Traviss had handled that scene with more subtlety and tact she could of had the vengeance killing be a momentary lapse not something close to premeditated murder.

That would have been fine, if he felt she had to die because of the danger she represented, not because he thought she killed Mara.

Not even then. I'm uneasy about Luke deciding to kill her for any reason. (I realize that some opponents are too dangerous and too insidious to allow any mercy but...I just don't like thinking of Luke as that guy.) Plus it would have been better if he captured Lumiya to question her about whatever plot she was running.
Jedi are really stupid about killing off leads to the greater plots of their enemies.

Also because by then Luke had finally come to realize that he had been wrong not to be more proactive about the YV.

That was mishandling by the writers. I remember Alston or Luceno saying in an interview that there was a big revelation behind the scenes of the NJO that would change...I think that was talking about the fact that Onimi was running the show as Shimmra's puppet master...but they never featured this. They didn't go into the ramifications of the fact that the Vong had been stripped of the force very well either.

They could've used those facts to explain Luke's reluctance to act. Say he was somehow sensing that there was some vital peice of info about the Vong that was glaring to him, but unknown. Then you could've had some great scenes with Jaina, Jacen, or Kypp Durron throughout the NJO. But I don't think they knew how NJO was going to turn out when they were writing the books where Luke appeared indecisive, which is not the way to write these kinds of stories. You have to know where you're going so all the points connect smoothly. Retconning can do that sure, but there comes a point where all you're doing is retconning which was about 50% of What TUF amounted to.

There really is a HUGE continuity disconnect between what Luke said at the end of TUF and what we see the Jedi doing and believing at the beginning of the DN trilogy, with no explanation given for it. I had forgotten that the Jedi were also working for the GA government at the beginning of that series as well. I really wonder what happened there?

I thought that was odd too especially since the book in the NJO had him being reluctant to get the order closely tied down to any gov't.

In my opinion, it doesn't matter whether Luke knew much about the YV or not. The point is that the YV were causing wholesale slaughter and massive destruction and taking over more and more of the galaxy. To me, the correct response is to STOP them and then analyze them and come to understand them later when innocent lives aren't in danger any more. That doesn't mean Luke and his Jedi shouldn't be trying to learn as much as they could about them and about their motives at the same time, but don't just sit passively by and let it happen without doing something to try to stop them.

Exactly, there were more clever ways to handle the Vong without weakening Luke as a leader or making him look like a warhawk like Kypp Durron was in the first half of NJO.

This is the big question. At this point, I don't know what that arc could be that could wipe out all of the damage that has been done to the character of Luke Skywalker in the NJO, DN, and LotF. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I'd say ignore it. Don't focus on

 

vereor_lynas :

in NJO luke was still IMO a very strong character who i enjoyed reading about...

I've never thought of NJO Luke as a very strong character until TUF. I saw him as indecisive and far too inactive. But I agree that things have gotten even worse in LotF. He hasn't been presented as a very good leader or model for the Jedi, and his terrible killing of Lumiya is what I consider to be the worst thing he has ever done. Luke certainly isn't leaving much of a Legacy. I hope that by some miracle Denning can repair this downward spiral.

Froggy22651 :

Yoda realized that a new breed of a Jedi would need to come about to beat the new breed of Sith, a type of Jedi more in tune with the Living Force. Obi-Wan confirmed that Luke, indeed, was the first of the new Jedi in his final parting words, and Luke went about the task of creating a new order far from the galactic capitol, training people from all walks of life...

Yes, and Luke was just beginning to do well with his new Order and his new Jedi traditions and training when the prequels came on the scene and things the prequel Jedi did were shoehorned into the NJO including that new Jedi Temple which again removes the Jedi from the common folk.

And then there's Luke. I don't know where they are going with him anymore. I don't even recognize the man they are describing.

It's sad. I don't know where they're going with Luke anymore either, and I'm not sure they do either. LotF has caused severe damage to Luke's character. He has certainly regressed from the Thrawn duology.

And while Luke may have been impatient and a little angry in the films, he matured and outgrew that by Heir to the Empire. And you're right that he never had problems making decisions or coming up with solutions to problems.

Zahn had the right idea when he wrote TTT. Luke wasn't a great hero and Jedi in those books because he could pull off uber Force tricks and use a lightsaber really well. It was all about his attitude and accumulated wisdom, the patience he had learned and his willingness to reach out for the good in others. He could fight when he had to, but he chose his battles wisely, and he calmly accepted the situation, no matter how dangerous or hopeless it seemed to be. There's your Jedi Master.

Very nicely said, Froggy!


Dawud786

Luke is FAR from inactive in the Dark Nest trilogy. Luke's been hands-on the whole time.

He might have been active in the DN trilogy, but he was also doing some pretty dark things. He was purposely using anger to make himself more powerful. He was allowing TORTURE to take place. That's not like Luke! He seemed to have accepted Vergere's teachings hook, line, and sinker, even though he had rejected them in TUF.

I can understand Luke using anger in the early parts of DNT to fuel his use of the Force. It was used as a plot device to return Luke and the entire NJO to Jedi orthodoxy.

But Luke never really left "Jedi Orthodoxy" UNTIL the DNT, so that doesn't make sense if it was meant as a plot device to return them to correct Jedi philosophy. The DNT took them AWAY from traditional Jedi behavior in The Joiner King and returned them to it in The Swarm War.

The doubts thing even adds up for me, because he was doubting himself for even allowing the Jedi to follow along with the moral relativism of Vergere and Jacen.

The problem is Luke DIDN'T accept Vergere and Jacen's moral relativism at the end of TUF. In the speech that he gave to his Jedi he said that the dark side does exist. So there was a huge disconnect from that to what we saw Luke and the Jedi doing in TJK.

I don't know what happened with LOTF. All I can think of is this... Luke's tiptoeing around only as a contrived means of stretching out a story that could have easily been done as a trilogy into a 9 books series. Almost everything about the Jedi, Skywalkers and Solos done in LOTF just smacks of that. It's lame.

Unfortunately, I agree. And I hate when

 

I'd like to know that too. But it's what we pay the professional authors for so they should have good ideas.

 

Lord_Riven :

I'd like to know that too. But it's what we pay the professional authors for so they should have good ideas.

Yes, the professionals should be able to have some good ideas for the best kind of future for Luke Skywalker. Unfortunately, so many authors seem to feel that Luke is "difficult" to write. As I said, I think I'd like to see Luke as one of the three leaders of a triumverate after the current war is over. And I'd like to see Luke and the Jedi operating in a galaxy which is at relative peace, seeing them on missions and putting out "fires" before they escalate into galactic wars.

Nobody145 , I'm sorry I'm so late in getting around to your long post!

Luke survived the confrontation, but was seriously traumatized not only by finding out his father is Darth Vader, but also that Obi-wan lied straight to his face.

I think that probably WAS traumatic for Luke. It was bad enough finding out the truth about Vader, but this meant that Obi-wan, and even Yoda, to a degree, had lied to him. He had to feel betrayed and wonder if there was ANYONE he could trust. Obi-wan and Yoda were actually fotunate that they DIDN'T lose Luke to the dark side when he found out. He was really vulnerable at that point.

Luke always ended up making the right choice, but it wasn't like "no way, I won't even go evil," it was "..........no."

I'd say his choice at the end of RotJ was pretty vehement though! He even threw away his lightsaber.

And yes, he chose right over wrong most of the time in the EU because he was older, wiser, more experienced. That's why the killing of Lumiya seems so off and so wrong.

So while I'm annoyed at prequel era problems popping up in LotF, Luke's NJO has actually be pretty stable.

As you said, except for Tahiri and Jacen ...and Luke doing the wrong thing. It's about time that Luke's Order is finally fairly stable. They had that huge rift during most of the NJO series and again in the DN series. I think both were probably influenced by the prequels.

though the Jedi didn't much in Revelation,

They haven't done all that much that's positive during the whole LotF series actually. That's rather odd since the series has the umbrella title: Legacy of the Force.

I do agree that a Jedi Council is needed to make decisions and to co-ordinate missions and Jedi. You make a good point about there being plenty of Jedi in Luke's Order who came from different walks of life, probably because they were already adults and set in their careers before they started training. Kenth Hamner is another one that you didn't mention. And there was Danni Quee and Tionne, but they left when they didn't feel they could put the Jedi first. and of course, Cilghal is primarily a healer. So the Jedi are somewhat diversified.

And honestly, I don't think the Jedi should be too involved in the political process anyway. Power corrupts, and political power would probably be too much.

Well, but Leia was Chief of State and she was actually a good ruler.

I'd personally wish Luke could step down, or at least take a step back from the main story, and just act as the Grandmaster,

I would say that in LotF, Luke's role HAS diminished. I now have Revelation, and Luke is hardly in it at all. He wasn't in Sacrifice very much except when he was sleeping and taking out Lumiya. I have a feeling he isn't going to be a major player in Invincible. So I'd say the authors HAVE already had Luke step down. I don't really want Luke to be a background character until they've repaired him so that he can be remembered as a smart, resourceful, wise, morally good character again. Then they can let him take a more background role, sitting on the Council, teaching, sending Jedi on missions, and maybe going out on some missions with Ben himself. There are no younger generation characters that can "carry" a lot of books themselves yet anyway.

 

Froggy, I can understand Luke using anger in the early parts of DNT to fuel his use of the Force. He did the same feat again in TUQ without using his anger. It was used as a plot device to return Luke and the entire NJO to Jedi orthodoxy. It's meant to be a disturbing element of Luke's character for us, and for him. Including the allowance of Cilghal mildly torturing a Gorog Killik. He was disturbed by his acceptance of it, and worse yet... by Cilghal's willingness to do it. The doubts thing even adds up for me, because he was doubting himself for even allowing the Jedi to follow along with the moral relativism of Vergere and Jacen. Plot point. Then the addition of Artoo revealing things about his mother and his father that he'd never seen before. You try not having doubts about your father that after you redeemed him from the dark side of the Force you idealize him as an example for the new Jedi. When you see a holovid of him cutting down Jedi younglings and choking out your Mom I think that would taint the pristine image you created for him in your mind for the last 30 years.

This is what's most sickening to me with the way SW is turning out. It reminds me of the saying: In a place where anything goes, everything will.

The fact is, Luke knew better. There is no moral relativism. The dark side is evil. I don't know why people do what Luke's doing, but it does happen, that the older you get, the more room you make for the mistakes of others, and have compassion. But warriors cannot afford that type of compassion. Youth is idealistic, yes, but it is hopeful. Luke had more of a moral center when he was young, than he has now, he should assume the sage role, because he is too worn down by life experience. He should never have let Jacen stray like he did. You're either int he Order or not. And his vast vast nepotism is the biggest stumbling block. The most frustrating thing about the Jedi is their lack of a defined role. We know they are awesome, but what do they represent? Luke hasn't thought about that at all in decades, meanwhile he is bringing a new generation with no moral compass. It's easy to see how the nauseating world of Legacy came about.

As for Vader, he didn't have a pristine image of him. He knew that he did bad things. He was a victim of his own pain and anger. But he still doesn't understand the dynamics of his parents relationship. I hated that whole thing and the series didn't need it. It was a gutless and cheap way to tie up loose ends. Anakin was much more than the miserable, frightened, out of control man that Luke saw on the worst day of his life. It was really like, why were the prequels ever made if they didn't change anything POV wise? I hate DNT. It was the start of the end of what SW means to most fans. Hope, righteousness, forgiveness, nobility and unity. Dead in favor of a bunch of "morally ambiguous" losers that wear stupid clothes and spout stupid platitutdes.

 

Dawud
in fact, in internal reflection, he notes that it is as if Jacen didn't feel that anyone who didn't go on a 5 year trek of Force discovery didn't deserve to have him reveal the wisdom he'd gained. That sort of clenched it for me. It wasn't the captivity and torture by the YV and Vergere that sent him over the edge. He's just too good in the later portion of the NJO for it to be that. There's something he learned or did in that time that stained him. It's the only logical and feasible way to explain his dramatic turn towards cruelty and genocide. I mean, we've got a Jacen that decides the best way to prevent a Killik "eternal" war is to exterminate the entire species. Nevermind viable options like remove Raynar and Lomi Plo from the equation and the Colony ceases to be while the Killiks live. And his cruel decision to give Ta'a Chume a stroke. Let alone his willingness to tamper with Ben's memory.

If something happened to Jacen during his 5 year wanderer act that turned him darker then DR should've showed it before DNT came out. The only thing that explains it now is that whacko lunatic Vergere's morally relativistic outlook to the force.

This is my one biggest complaint of the EU most notably under DR the utter lack of Character consistency.

Child
I agree that Luke should have captured Lumiya instead of killing her. He should have only killed her as a last resort if there was no other way, and in self defense.

Right. And tried at the beggining to reach out to Shira Brie one last time, give Lumiya the chance to turn her back on the Sith way. I doubt she would have taken the chance, but Luke still should have offered it. Then you can have them fight.

That's not a bad suggestion to ignore past mistakes in Luke's characterization and to start with a "proper" Luke and go forward. But what kind of a character arc could they have that would make a "proper" Luke? What kind of a role do you think he could play?

As I said, I think I'd like to see Luke as one of the three leaders of a triumverate after the current war is over. And I'd like to see Luke and the Jedi operating in a galaxy which is at relative peace, seeing them on missions and putting out "fires" before they escalate into galactic wars.

Pretty much like your suggestion. The hero trying to drag the galaxy back up away from the brink of disaster after disaster. But I don't want Luke to be one of the triumvirate, Leia's the best Jedi suited for that job (though I don't expect she'll take the job what with her resolution during NJO to put all that politics stuff behind her), and maybe he could take some of Mon Mothma's advice and try to have the order not so insulated from the rest of the galaxy's population as well unlike the way it was with the OJO that made it so easily purged by the Empire.

Riven
I'd like to know that too. But it's what we pay the professional authors for so they should have good ideas.

But they've had some good ideas...extragalactic invasion...the fall of Jacen Solo...a civil war that divides the good guys...etc. It's just their careless execution of those ideas that made the current EU so abysmally disastrous.

 

I don't think that the Jedi should really fight as much for GA as they have done and should instead concentrate more on saving as many as they can. What I mean is that in Betrayal the Jedi shouldn't have participated in the first attack against Corellia. I think that was a mistake on Luke's part. It was a conflict where the Jedi should have been peacemakers, diplomats and as neutral as possible, and GA should have used commandos and normal starfighter squadrons against Corellia. Jedi should avoid these morally gray conflicts, where war is just a continuation of politics by other means, like von Clausewitz wrote. The Jedi can't or shouldn't participate in all wars GA fights, I think that is the lesson they should have learnt from their own history.

What I wrote about meant more about Fury, but they do work together.

Luke was intended to die in a blaze of glory in VP, so that explains his activity in that novel. There were reasons for his passivity in mid-NJO, but not a good one of course: They build Anakin Solo up, so that they could kill him. And Luke had to stay back, because the missions that Anakin did and the one he died in were the kind of missions that Luke would have normally done. But in the original plan Luke would have been already dead and Jacen in the role that Anakin had. And they never compensated for that when it came to Luke and had to come up with the nonsense in DW how Luke feared that he would lead a dark crusade if he would be more active.

As far as I remember, the idea was that he found out how to be proactive without leading that dark crusade. It was just an excuse, of course. A correction for Luke's passivity in the novels before, but his more active role also limited that of Jacen, who was supposed to be the great new hero - although FH would have anyway taken most of the air out of Jacen's balloon.

I really meant TSW, where Luke decided that NJO shouldn't be GA's servants, but more independent, yet allied to it because it was important for peace and stability etc. But this was forgotten totally in LotF. The Jedi are in the exact same position in the beginning of LotF as they are in DN. The whole Jedi relationship to GA thing is being done again in LotF, but it's development is just more severe now, instead in DN, where they backed from the precipice.

 

I remember TSW ending a bit less decisively, where Luke had feelings to that effect but the argument was never really resolved. That was actually my first reaction upon reading "Betrayal": the Jedi went from leaning towards separate but allied, to wholeheartedly serving the GA and even performing secretive kidnappings for them without even questioning orders. They became essentially GA Black Ops (well, Grey Ops since they try not to kill I suppose) instead of a separate order of peacekeepers. It was quite jarring.

 

Perhaps my memory of the ending makes Luke more decisive than he was.

In a way this close connection, this servitude to GA in LotF, seems to be the equivalent of the Potentium philosophy in DN. In the beginning of DN, the Jedi believe in it and use Dark Side powers, but then Luke starts to doubt and then rejects Potentium. In LotF it is the relationship to GA that Luke starts to doubt and then rejects.

 

I think the problem might be that the authors, or Del Rey in general, don't think they can have a story without mixing up what Jedi are. NJO, Jedi are confused as to whether they can fight back without turning dark, which is handwaved at the end by Luke making an incredibly obvious statement about justified defense. DNC, Jedi are confused as to whether the dark side is an actual external element or not, which is again handwaved by Luke simply making a decision based on ALL OF HIS PRIOR EXPERIENCE; who'da thunk? LOTF, Jedi seem to have been confused as to whether they can operate without being a controlled branch of the galactic government, as well as completely hesitant to rein in potential darksiders (although that's been a problem for a while now).

It seems like the Jedi Order has to be constantly questioning itself, which I don't get the necessity of.