Books CRUCIBLE by Troy Denning: The Official Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Let’s be honest here, the true future plot for the novels died all the way back in Betrayal, Crucible in no way even reaches the deeps of that series, I personal actually gave up on the Post-NJO novel series back in Bloodliens and Tempest because it was easy to tell that they had no clue what they were doing or were they were going. Stop buying the stuff and they will get the message, as I keep telling my friend who actually buys these books and then lends them to me so I know what he then goes on a triad on.

 

Betrayal indeed.

 

I don't even like the Dark Nest trilogy anymore. I can't forgive what they did to Raynar Thul.

 

thats why i put the sentence in question in bold type. I have been doing this for years on here with no problem. But I will consider doing that

 

If you read the linked post that the line you quoted is from, you'd see that I wasn't talking about wanting more editorial oversight for any in-universe narrative reasons. I asked for that because Denning was presenting some very problematic real-world messages that I feel can and will alienate readers.

I can abide poorly written books, heaven knows they exist in the EU. What I can't abide are the real-world messages Denning seems to be inadvertently projecting.

 

For the record, I want to establish that I'm not talking about the treatment-of-the-character kind of stuff Lane covered, but the fact that Denning apparently cannot conceptualize of stories not revolving entirely and exclusively around the Jedi.

"I didn't want to see Jaina going off to live with Jag somewhere other than the Jedi Temple, because I didn't want to lose her as a character. In my view, Jaina is a vital character to the future of the whole EU, and whenever anyone said she should be with Jag, I kept having images of her being ripped from my writing life forever."

So if Jaina leaves the Jedi Temple, she leaves the story, according to Denning. We "lose her as a character," "forever." If you're not at the Jedi Temple, you're not part of the story. If you're not immediately in the Jedi orbit, you might as well not even be part of the universe. In the Empire? Bzzzt. You're not a character anymore. In the Galactic Alliance? Bzzzt. No characters there. You can only be a real part of the story if you're at the Jedi Temple. Why? Logically, because Denning cannot conceive of writing a story that doesn't circle entirely around the Jedi as a massive, monolithic Order. Only by making Jag "a part of the Jedi Order" could the stories continue to include Jaina and Jag as a couple, because there's no room for protagonists not centered in the Jedi Order.

It's just . . . how profoundly, intensely disappointing. It's pathetic, it's depressing that Star Wars has come to this. What incredible tunnel vision. What incredible myopia. The lead creative on the post-ROTJ era cannot even wrap his mind around the idea of non-Jedi-obsessive stories. Where is the creativity? Where is the understanding of the OT? And it's not even an embarrassed admission, it's said up front like he doesn't even realize how incredibly artistically small-minded and weird it is.

I'm serious about it being depressing. I just feel . . . defeated. There is no hope. I have no hope that he gets better. No hope that he even realizes what's wrong. He loves Han Solo, loves Leia, but can't imagine stories about people not defined by their connection to the Jedi Order? His vision of Star Wars has somehow become too fundamentally twisted and limited for me to hope anymore it will ever change or fit. Talk about being stuck in a rut.

 

Wow lol. I didn't realize he was so myopic in his approach to Star Wars, I thought it was actually a conscious choice on his part to have the Jedi dominate the plot, but yeah he seems incapable of even conceiving of a plot without them. I wonder what he thinks of the Hand of Thrawn duology where Luke and Mara are sidelined and there's like one quick mention that Luke's Jedi are putting out fires and acting without his guidance but are otherwise not depicted? Denning is the anti-Zahn.

 

Talk about being stuck in a rut


Yeah it really is quite limiting by Denning. Why can’t the Jedi Order in Luke’s time ever grow beyond one singular temple? Why can’t Jaina lead one in Imperial Space?

I suppose Jag forming the Imperial Knights is kind of on the backburner since, is he even the Emperor anymore?

I just recently read the TPB of Dawn of the Jedi, and one nice thing was there seem to be several Jedi locations, run by separate Masters. This shows the Jedi as a vast group, not just Luke, Leia Ben and occasionally Tahiri on call to answer every single crisis that ever pops up in the galaxy. For as “real world” as they are trying to write the stories lately, it seems incredibly far fetched for Luke to be able to drop everything to solve every crisis every single time.

 

Even here he is harmless against what others have done and said, also we have seen Denning work fine with plots and stories outside of the Jedi Order, his first two Star Wars books are prove enough of this (not to mention the tons of other books he has written) and even the quote is somewhat of a context thing here. He favoured keeping Jaina around the Jedi and thus felt that Zekk would make the better partner, instead of having her haul along the Imperial baggage that comes with Jagged, which makes sense because from inception LOTF and FOTJ seemed to have been about the Jedi, the Jedi and some more bits about the Jedi. If she was with Jagged it would either be a rather haphazard long term relationship were they never spent any time together anyway or she would have moved off together with him, but since they wanted to keep her around with the Jedi they instead decided to have Jagged be the one who now strolls around the Jedi like he has no other purpose in life.

Basically it just again boils back to LOTF was stupid.

 

That was a superb post by Lara Winree. So not only did Denning essentially argue that Jaina had to remain part of the Jedi Order, but also that Jag had to change and compromise his life so he could become part of the Order. What Denning did, what he argued for, ended up stripping agency not just from Jaina, but also from Jag. All so both characters could remain within Denning's tiny little comfort zone as a writer. IMO this is lazy, selfish, and disgusting. Now I'm even more certain that he should never be allowed to write another SW novel. This is not a knee-jerk reaction on my part, but the result of considering Denning's work in and influence on the SW storyline since Dark Nest.

 

The stuff about Jaina and Jag really isn't anything new for Denning. From the start when he first got storytelling power, he's shown that he will discard the core concept to a character to fit his plots. He's done it to Jacen, he's done it to Luke, he did it to Jaina -- who, if you'll remember in the NJO was a pilot first, Jedi second, which is how she met Jag -- and now he's done it with Jag. And with Jag, with what made him who he is discarded, what is he other than Jaina's husband? Characters are defined by their relationship to the Jedi now.

 

This is truly sad, and I'm not even a big fan of Jag. But he was most interesting when he had his own arc, rather than just being Jaina's attractive accessory. Jaina and Jag weren't used effectively in Crucible, but even in that one chapter I wondered how Jag could be fulfilled with just assisting in Jedi training and leading a Commando team (which we're told about, not shown). He's really capable of more, despite (as Luke so OOC informs us) being non Force sensitive.

 

I love Jedi and Sith as much as the next person but that is wrong. I want to see other people! The non-force-sensitive people! The Jedi and Sith make up a small portion of the galaxy. Show how their wars effect the common people!

 

We had that before the prequels, maybe the sequel trilogy will bring us back to that.

How do we rate this as a send off for the big 3, in the current EU?

 

I gotta wonder if this force user tunnel vision causes alot of the other problems. Of course the actions the Jedi take are going to come off as extreme and myopic when we don't get interaction with the norms to show why the Jedi gotta kill all the Sith.

Then you have how Denning takes the human dimension out of forces users and defines Jedi as JEDI instead of people who happen to be Jedi. Now being a light/darksider is less how about how good a person you are and more how good you are at dodging the dark side. So we got a situation where Sith A is Sith A and no matter who you are or what you've actually done you're still an evil bad guy who does evil.

Just goes to show that normal people in Star Wars are pretty damn important. Without them the whole premise of the franchises central conflict starts to come apart.

This is all pretty interesting, anybody plan to start collecting more Denning quotes to support it? I'd like to see a giant list of the weird social problems the books have.

 

The OT only had Luke, Vader, Palpatne, Obi-Wan and Yoda. Not counting Leia. Rebellion against the Empire. Strong non-Force using characters. That was Star wars to me. Here's hoping about the ST.
As a Send-off to the Big 3? 0. Big Fat Zero.
The Unifying Force is the send-off. No contest.

 

Han doesn't hang out with his old drinking buddies anymore. Remember his last scene in TUF? Now he's just a Jedi hanger on.

 

I didn’t really buy it as a send off. I took it more as Luke will be more of an advisor than Grand Master moving forward. But really, how would he retire? Is he going to go be a hermit? That would be incredibly out of character. Leia and Han…yes, I see them as maybe actually taking a back seat from the action, since they have each other and Han isn’t force sensitive. But Luke doesn’t have Mara anymore, only has Ben, and the Jedi are his family. He isn’t going to just abandon his son to go off and live alone somewhere for no reason beyond him kind of getting old

I see this as more of Luke turning into the role Yoda had during the PT, finally

Though maybe that’s just me reading into this what I hope happens

Ideally, I’d love to see him go off and search for the Mortis Monolith, or Krayt and how it’s a send off would be that Luke has left the leading of the Jedi Order as a whole to his council, with him taking on this long term mission. He has created an order that can function well on its own, leaving him free to lead the high level long term mission of Mortis or Krayt.

 

LivingJediDream And with Han retiring, it looks like Jag Fel is stepping in to take his place.

 

I'm midway through the book; can't say I very much care for it. Too much action. Who even cares? We know they're not going to die, so how about exciting my brain with some intriguing ideas instead of having these poor ageing characters go through hell for no reason? Anyway, I would just like to defend the right of authors to have absolute freedom in writing characters (even if they do not own said characters) on issues of "morality". Although I definitely disagree with the morality of the latter part of the post-RotJ era, if authors want to put the characters in situations readers might potentially find questionable, bully for them. It is extremely disturbing to envision editors stepping in to "correct" the author's message. Above all, let's keep "real-world messages" out of fiction writing. Brrrr!

 

So true. And so so sad. He could be an interesting character, ffs.

As for your question newdawn12 - I thought it was a terrible send off. I wasn't left feeling good about the Jedi order, the Galactic gov't, Jaina, Jag, Ben, etc. Bleh.

 

Don't have much to contribute on the recent discussion as Hav and co have nailed it.

 

Maybe Del Rey's people seem to be under the delusion that only stories about the Jedi and Sith sell, since that's what the movies are all about and the general public think of Jedi and Sith. So they're applying that to the EU as well.

 

And yet Del Rey did its best commercially with the NJO which is notable for its explicit lack of Sith (barring Denning retcons!).

I do think it has a lot to do with a desire to emulate the films. But I bet Scoundrels outsells Crucible for the year.

 

Wow, sixteen hour drives and new jobs takes me away from the fun. Well, if this be the last then tis time for the best. Lets smash those windows.

First, the allegations of sexism of Denning is utter nonsense, and I'm surprised so many people actually believe it. Let us address the issue the hack bloggers keep screaming about, and let us truly hope they never read Stephen R. Donaldson. We may see a mass suicide.

So, the bad guys creating the biots, the bad guys, the heavies, the antagonists, the twins who eat babies for breakfest. If they are producing the biots then the writer is automatically a proponent of said alleged ideology? Really? The school of resentment has run out of arguments if they are doing this.

Havac, you have run dry. You are unable to address the novel on a substantial basis so now you are pulling vague, badly composed digressions out of nowhere. Myopia? Because Denning has a certain collection of characters he enjoys writing about? If the situation was reversed, if Allston was leading the charge, then you would enjoy the status quo instead.

"Wait, Allston has the pulse unlike the others!"

No, you are assuming your preconceived notions is the only way, that your reading of the Original Trilogy possess the only validity.

You see one interpretation of the post-ROTJ EU, I see another. However, everyone else demands their version be pertinent, and everyone is reducing themselves to the tiniest scraps averrable.

The article you have been quoting, along with the putridity posed by Tosche Station, is intellectually dishonest. I am going to tell you why it is.

First, you are assuming because Han is excluded from the final battle then Denning is against the non-Force sensitive characters. Mind you, this is a planet with a structure imbuing dark side power to Force blind sentients, causing the antagonists to have growths and throw dark force power. Han keeps from giving into the temptation. Why is Han automatically seen as a lesser character since he is told to stay out of an area of his expertise?

Mind you, the separation of Han from the main group puts reader into Han's point-of-view of the bizarre, metaphysical actions going on.

Mind you, the reader is experiencing the emotions of the Han facing the distinct possibility his wife and brother-in-law are dead.

Mind you, by Lando staying onboard the ship he is monitoring the the possible escape. Wait, Lando might be out of his depth.

Why must Luke and Leia be punished for possessing a strength? A 5'7 person will never have the strength ability of a 6'7 individual. They are the Jedi on the planet with quixotic, obsecure Force abilities. They made the right choice.

Wait, your predisposition of every novel must triumph every skill set is running into narrative logic.

So the writers had a disagreement on Jania's love life. They compromised. That's it. You are trying to make that out to be far worse because you have ran out of arguments to make.

This is why people to overly concerned about making a political or a philosophical statement are terrible fiction writers.

What is myopic? Not the EU, the current state of this entire forum is it. I am calling one of you out, right here, this thread, so we can discuss the merits or lack thereof of Crucible from a purely aesthetic perspective. The time has come for the Literature forum to be a discussion about Star Wars literature, not half-baked pseduo-crying over Denning or the other dislike author crucified by popular consensus.

We need actual discussion, not a Sunday School meeting.