Lit When do we get a book about Palpatine training Vergere?

Then what about post 128? If that wasn't an attempt at "justification" I don't know what is.

Reminds me of Sith. "End justify the means" even if it involves horrific crimes.

She knew Tsavong's attack plans.

 

You know what, I agree. I found it deplorable when Jacen's teacher worked with a genocidal, planet destroying nut too.

 

What could have Vergere done to prevent any of the atrocities of the Yuuzhan Vong War?

 

I said she engaged in torture with what she believed was a valid purpose. I never said I agreed with what she did. But I do understand why she did it. If you're going to make stuff up, you need to make up better strawmen than that.

 

Vergere never tortured Jacen. The closest thing to "torture" that she did was that she put the slave seed in him, which is ultimately what allowed him to achieve Vongsense as well as achieve empathy -- and compassion -- for the life forms of the Yuuzhan Vong galaxy.

 

@ AlyxDinas

Before you said you don't care what I believe, only about "what happens". The facts are that she was responsible for a teenager's torture. But now you say her "purpose" matters, as if that changed anything about the horrific crime.

I hate DE.

 

Luke is EVIL.

 

She willingly delivered him into Tsavong Lah's hands when she gave him the position of the falcon. Just because he didn't succeed back then doesn't excuse her behaviour.

 

Luke delivered Leia and unborn Anakin into Palpatine's hands. Inexcusable.

 

All you are proving to me is that DE is a **** comic that should be ignored.

 

I've always found it amusing that even if we just buy into the illogical Sith retcon with Vergere, of Jacen's two teachers, Luke still did worse things than Vergere.

 

You're missing the fact that I don't disagree. She was responsible for a teenager's torture. What's your point? I've always said she had a reason for doing it. I've never said the reason makes the actions any "better". Only that it makes it understandable. That is, we can understand why she does it.

Working with half the facts doesn't do you any favors. You don't know everything she taught. You don't know everything she did. You never got far enough to get a clearer sense of her motivations. So why are you talking as if you understand? I mean, at this point all you're saying is "You agree with torture! She engaged in torture!" The first part is false, the second is true.

But you say it as if it means something. As if it Vergere acted out of sadism. It couldn't be further from the truth.

 

Because I don't give a rats behind about whether she was sadistic or not. Atris wasn't sadistic as well, she also just wanted the best for the galaxy, but she still fell. Same Kreia. There is no medal or something if your motives are pure. Some of the worst monsters in history thought they were justified in what they did. And I don't think that honorable motives or "being understandable" make a character any less Sith. Even Darth Vader claimed that he wanted to bring order to the galaxy. I don't put much (or any) stock in rationalizations for horrible crimes. I find them fascinating intellectually but they won't get me to soften up to a character.

 

I've only played half of TSL. I just couldn't get through it. But people tell me that Kreia only wanted the Exile to grow as a student. I find that to be ridiculous. It feels like a retcon that Avellone came up with to justify what she did.

 

Kreia turned out to be a Sith Lord, Darth Traya to be exact. It also became obvious she was crazy.

 

This is why we can't have nice things.

 

I know she's Traya. I've read the Wookie. That's all I need.

 

You give no indicators whatsoever as to the nature of your solutions and just leave me guessing and then you retort with insults?

For all I knew, knocking them out with non-lethal gas is your nice and clean solution, but you couldn't get there without some very nasty acts.

But how much of the NR's war assets will these merciful options of yours consume and how many NR citizens will have to die for them? How many planets will the Vong steamroller over while you try these options? What happens if the Vong win in the interim?

The point of NJO was that the Vong were a monolithic enemy of biotechnological Terminators and their warriors lived up to that pretty damn well. You can't stop them easily, you can't reason with them, they don't feel remorse and love pain and they will not stop ever. That's how the Vong were set up. The only ones to really depart from that were the Shamed Ones and they were quite correctly shown mercy.

 

The point of the NJO was that even the alien threat of the Yuuzhan Vong (that exist outside of the Force, apparently) could be redeemed as a species.

 

No, that's the big surprise conclusion, not what it started off as. Does NJO really carry off that big surprise conclusion? Not really, but as a general rule, SW does redemption badly, NJO is no exception.

 

It wasn't a "surprise conclusion." It was the whole basis of Jacen's hero's journey. It was very obviously building to that as early as Conquest. The fact that Luke was struggling whether to engage them from the start was also part of building toward that, because Luke wasn't sure if he was justified in killing them indiscriminately or not.

 

Nah, nothing obvious about it, given how vile the great majority of Vong were acting, but hey, it's easy to say it's obvious in hindsight, with the conclusion having been published a decade ago.

In case you've forgotten, or overlooked it, I'm firmly in the camp that likes what Legacy did with them offering restorative terraforming decades later as a form of atonement. Why didn't they do it sooner? They didn't realise they needed to, it took an awful lot of time to un-indoctrinate them. (People like Choka? He'd never even be open to the prospect of a different way of thining in the first place.) Those moves really strengthened TUF and NJO as a whole.

 

I never thought that the New Jedi Order was going to end with the Yuuzhan Vong being exterminated as a species. But I suppose that I could see you reading it that way.

 

When did you read NJO out of curiosity? Because I think there's a fundamental gulf between those read it as it came out and those who read it later, knowing where it lead to if only at the general level. It very likely results in very different opinion and perception of the story.

A large part of that too is related to how NJO was marketed and it was not as some grand redemptive saga! Instead it was to be the most nasty and grittiest SW story ever! It's marketing was, in that respect, very successful in moulding expectations.

Thus a fantastical resolution that went quite contra-flow to its marketing was not at all expected. That it happened to be one that worked exceedingly well, more unexpected. TUF will likely keep winning the prize for biggest unexpected smash hit - just about everyone loved it. Now how often can you say that about any story on these boards? But the only problem with it is: If X was the destination, why do we have these earlier moves? The answer likely is NJO was never as well-planned out as it claimed. For me, it being more honest about that would have seen me cut it some slack.

 

I read it as it came out 1999-2003. The story was explicitly setting up a non-genocide resolution to the Yuuzhan Vong War as early as Conquest when Anakin Solo becomes allied with a Yuuzhan Vong warrior to a common cause. These subplots don't exist for nothing. But it was obvious even earlier that the Jedi weren't going to be complicit in genocide with the subplot of a schism between Luke and Kyp, in which Luke was very much concerned that Kyp was going to lead the Jedi directly into that. Once Jacen achieved empathy and compassion for Yuuzhan Vong life, it was very much obvious that the series was going to conclude with him finding common ground. That was July 2002, well over a year before the end.