Why are you Addicted to Uninteresting Characters? (betrayal)

Hmm...

I think it's the nature of the beast. SW has always had a very basic 'light-and-dark' philosophy, therefore has always appealed to people who share that worldview, albeit in various different fashions. As a result, you basically have a fanbase whose worldview will easily slip into 'light-and-dark' as a sort of default. By which I'm commenting on myself as well, of course.

 

Yeah I get that vibe alot. But for the most part the entire shift of our society has been towards grayscale morality, the executives at Del Rey know that, which is why the NJO was created and also why it did so well. What I don't get is why people have so great a difficulty accepting that and reveling in what they have.

 

I was deadly serious, Shrimpus. Merely saying Luke fears the midnight dark, for some childhooh unexplained reason, adds character. And the price: the surplus of a few offhand words.

You should try it some day. It was great to see in Unseen Queen. Whilst escaping from the brig toward the end, Leia avoided contacting Sebatyne, remembering she'd just woken up, and always had this urgent need to hunt something, anything, it did not matter. A second time in, Swarm War: an offhand comment was thrown in, that this was a Jedi Master who had been training heaps of Jedi before Luke even found her.

Both instances, perhaps five lines all up. The outcome: value added.

Vader's rancid breath, no one's bothered to even reveal Kenobi's homeworld! It's some sacred secret, is it?

 

My only thing, aside from scratching my head in puzzlement over your bizzare word combinations, is to wonder what point if any you are making and what relevance this has. See you are now sayin that they do add characterization with tiny details. I am asking why large paths of a characters psyche must be defined in predetermined bundles.

 

And that's your error: assuming there must be large paths of psyche. Offhand comments are all that are needed. The prevalent problem with SW is, we have major villains in books that we know nothing about. Spiderwebs of effects that impetus all manner of events, but we often know little more than their full names or the usual greedy behavioural persona.

Plo, Krennel, these are people that provide major presence to a book, yet are utterly unknown. Sidious is the worst of the lot. His personality and even visage exhibits absolutley nothing new each time every time. Bantamic Chewbacca too. He was an utter bore to read. Thank ice skaters for Tyrant's Test . . . and A Forest Apart, even.

 

I'll admit, Jacen is one of the most uninteresting characters there is, and his turning pales 1000x to Anakin's. And Luke Skywalker was number 2 to Anakin/Vader in the movies and the hero to his tragic hero, and they've somewhat castrated him in EU and made him one dimensional. Sad, really.

 

True, Rhonda. Very true. The NJO books should have utilised him in better in the series' first half. Rather than endless dithering philosophy, lets see him try a way, fail, try another way, fail again. He can still doubt himself, but at least we'd have seen him in action, exploring different options, whilst still searching for himself. Balance Point was a particularly tedious read, in this regard.

 

Now thats an odd take on it. I personally feel that Jacens "path" is very interesting, though Luke is rather simple.

 

Instead of the intense, desperate turning that we see of Anakin who basically has a few dark side moments here and there (although they were large ones), with Jacen we see this weird acceptance, even as far back as Traitor and no inner turmoil. Just arrogance.

Anakin always had immense inner turmoil (which led to the suspense and drama, like the whole dragon thing), even though he could be arrogant. He was always protrayed as confused and self-doubting, even as Vader. Which to me, made him the dimensional (iconic, even as we've seen) character that he is. He hates what he does, but doesn't feel he's worth saving and so he just gives up, does what he sees as "the right thing" and means to and end, and clings to Palpatine (as Lumiya pretty much testifies to in Betrayal).

With Jacen, it's all so.... "yeah, so what? I think I'll try the Dark Side for awhile. Increase my knowledge even more."

 

"...its also completely unreflective of the nature of the arguement and completely tangetial to the actual topic."

You are right, sorry, but since you have answered me, let me do the same.


"Having an arbitrary and capricous police force prone to random summary executions is a completely different thing than a precient law enforcement agency"

True, but I never talk about an ARBITRARY and CAPRICOUS police force. That is something YOU have said, not me.
The Jedi are very alike to a police force, and we have a Jedi killing an innocent (another Jedi, a partner) because she learnt something she shouldn´t. And Jacen would have done the same if it was any other person. And Jacen would do it again and again if he though it needed. I wouldn´t like to have a police like that, that´s all I said.


"A hostage dying in the line of fire is a common and tragic occurance, it does not however mean that the police were wrong to save a dozen hostages by taking the shot."

I agree. And you are saying me this because...?


"I suggest you read Homicide: A year on the killing streets, it will wipe some of the stars from your eyes and clean up your perception of law enforcement".

If you are going to get personal let it be for something I have said, right now I have no idea what the hell do you think I have said.


And about the answers you give to others:


"The ultimate question I am asking is why must what SIDE your on trump who you are?"

Because this is Star Wars, and in the Star Wars universe the power (the Force) has a price. Good (light) vs Evil (Dark Side). If you use the Force then you can fall to the Dark Side. If you use the Dark Side then your mind and soul are corrupted.


"The entire interest of Jacens character right now hinges entirely on the fact that the "dark side" has NOTHING to do with his decisions and actions."

You said it: RIGHT NOW. But he just made his choice, isn´t it?


"In any situation where will is external the moral responsibilty is absconded. No one blames frodo for not being able to throw away the ring. Likewise an external corruptive darkside makes anyone who dabbles an eventual convertee and thus robs them of the chance to become dark of their own minds".

It isn´t the same: Frodo falls, Jacen jumps.


"Finally, the very fact that you say you can be tortured or broken to the dark side says that free will has nothing to do with it."

Everyone has limits. As I said before: some people fall, some people jump.

 

Why not kill himself, then? It would be kind of hard to kill Luke then.

And I think it's absolutely ridiculous to absolve Jacen of responsibility. Nelani doesn't cause Luke to die. Jacen does. Of course, accepting this would require Jacen to take responsibility for his actions, to admit to being mistaken, so of course he would find it easier to kill another person instead. I get why Jacen feels that way, even though it isn't rational. What I don't get is why fans would fall for it.

In Jacen's situation, absolutely. Jacen had no right to take the life of Nelani. If he wanted to make absolutely sure that he never killed Luke, he should have rammed that lightsaber into himself. That's the only life he has a right to give.

Leia's thoughts weren't just about that situation. She was considering all possibilities (something her son seems to have forgotten), wondering what she would do in an impossible dilemma; considering it rationally, not in the heat of the moment.

A loaded question. Other people have different ideas of what makes a character interesting. I find a good villain with good motivations interesting. Their bad actions don't have to be rationalized away to make them so.

And the very good reviews it got were...what? Everybody being wrong but you, the Enlightened One who can see the truth?

 

Prove this. Electric Judgment hurts and kills if used against organics. Force Lightning causes extreme pain and body damage even in short bursts; obviously it won't always be held on long enough to kill, but even that little bit is simply torture. And I don't label it as "evil", really; I label it as a completely Dark side power. There's a difference between doing something which is wrong and being evil; everyone makes mistakes. But Force Lightning in any situation is a mistake, especially since the Force offers so many non-violent methods of defusing every situation.

Yes ... there is. Force adepts, raised in isolation from Jedi or Sith teachings, who embrace the negative emotions as sources of power (example: Nightsisters, Kar Vastor, etc.) oppose Jedi and champion fear and destruction over peace and stability. The Dark side is very natural; so is the instinct to hurt someone who's offended you, or take what you want regardless of whether it's yours. Simply because something is natural is not an argument for its rightness.

Opinion. That's like saying a heroin addict has no interest as a character. After all, heroin is an addictive drug which warps the user's mind and body with its use, often changing its addicts into completely different people. Does that mean that the character is no long interesting? By your logic, it could just be written off.

The fact that he went that far that fast is evidence in itself for the existence of a corrupting agent. Regardless of whether the movie was bad or not (I happen to agree with you on that point, at least), it's still canon. Events happened that way. And he was most definitely a good and moral man. So he had baser instincts, of fear and rage and greed; what human being doesn't? For nearly all of his life before then, he strove to help people. It could be argued that he was a better human being than even the other Jedi, since he cared more about individual's lives than any abstract ideals like "peace" and "justice". True, the fall was a long time coming, but that doesn't mean before it fully happened he wasn't a good person.

 

That's exactly what I thought when I read this scene. If Jacen really believes that, from this point on, somebody has to die to prevent the galaxy from being plunged into certain chaos (the same excuse he used in Dark Nest), why didn't he off himself?

I'll give you an answer. Because he's selfish. The possibility never occurred to him. Additionally, scattered throughout Betrayal are some strong clues that Jacen cares less and less about other people. His reputation and his ideologies are the supreme concerns from the very beginning. He decides that Luke's dark man must not exist because he's never detected it...he believes that his visions are the only views of the future that matter...he doesn't seem to give a flip about the people that he serves. And he has a strong jealousy complex with Uncle Grand Master. As for him being nice to strangers, I seemed to read a lot of thinly veiled contempt for almost everyone. Nah, the dark side hasn't affected him at all.

I've mentioned this before, but the corruption of the dark side seems to be a cycle. As the user taints the Force with his/her selfish use, the tainted Force in turn taints the user. It's a nasty process, but it seems to be true to life. The more you worship yourself, the more you're going to serve your own interests, and the fewer craps you're going to give about anyone else, family and friends included. And if you don't think this process is expediated when you throw power into the equation, then you and I have very different views of history.

Whether one gets on this path through emotion and desperation (Anakin) or through more cold, calculating logic (Jacen) matters little. The common factor is selfishness, and the end of the proof is the same: a kriffed-up-in-the-head person who has decided that they are #1, and whoever they have to leave dead and bloodied on the way is just an unfortunate casualty.

Personally, I think the cold, calculating path has been, so far, an engaging story. Not at all unrealistic or uninteresting. I might even be presumptous enough to say you wouldn't have argued about it for two pages if it wasn't interesting.

Oh, and Ex, I now realize that you're the resident cynic who has to down even the most dogmatic of fandom principles in your native language of Aphasia. And I want to thank you for providing me hours of chuckles. Just so you know, Obi-Wan's homeworld is locked up in the same top secret archive that contains Palpatine's first name and Yoda's species. It's in a mountain somewhere in the middle of a jungle, protected by LFL's Dark Jedi Guardian Master Chee, making sure that this vitally important information never reaches the public eye, for the purpose of torturing us.

Saw the Tempest cover yesterday. Frikkin sweet.

 

I don't see what is so sacred to forbid knowing Kenobi's birth world, pluralling Palpatine's name, or Yoda's species. It affects absolutley nothing, and really, if just knowing those three one words can rob someone of the mystery inherent in them, I'm concerned.

I'd rather know the mystery how Dark Woman can vanish in thin air.

Fallanassi. You'll see . . .

 

Hah! The Dark Woman taught the Fallanassi that trick.

 

I miss those days... Poor Jacen, not only does he have to contend with a galaxy altering problem every book but a character altering problem as well...

At least Zekk can be secure knowing that his place is firmly entrenched in the margins of the SW universe!!