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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit Reading NJO...Again

Discussion in 'Literature' started by spicewood, Sep 17, 2017.

  1. Nom von Anor

    Nom von Anor Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 7, 2012
    There's also the Nostril Of Palpatine.
     
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  2. JeeediMoriah

    JeeediMoriah Jedi Master star 1

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    Apr 23, 2014
    I did like her in Vector Prime but they did nothing with her character after that and that's why I don't appreciate the authors throwing her back in the mix (especially so late in the game) like she's this major character. I wish she would have started training as a Jedi after Vector Prime or I wish they would have given her an arc at least. She doesn't grow as a character at all and that's why she bores me. She's smart, pretty and that's about it!
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2018
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  3. Noash_Retrac

    Noash_Retrac Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 14, 2006
    The cancelled NJO series that would've featured her would've been good, but it got exchanged for the Anakin Solo duology instead. She did have prominent bits in Onslaught and Star by Star as well as the Force Heretic trilogy, even to a small extend The Unifying Force, but she suffered in favour of others. It would've been better if she made more appearances, heck Cilghal should've just been the political advisor the Jedi needed desperately after her years of service as an ambassador and senator and Danni should've gotten the Jedi scientist role that the Mon Calamari Jedi was thrusted into instead.
     
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  4. Darth Invictus

    Darth Invictus Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Aug 8, 2016
    I think they were setting up a Jacen Danni romance and then the authors dropped it for some reason.
     
  5. Noash_Retrac

    Noash_Retrac Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 14, 2006
    Yeah, and we got the uncomfortably written Jacen/Tenel Ka relationship.
     
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  6. Darth Invictus

    Darth Invictus Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Aug 8, 2016
    I always liked the Jacen/Tenel relationship personally.
     
  7. Noash_Retrac

    Noash_Retrac Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 14, 2006
    "Sleep with me and I'll give you a fleet." - Tenel Ka, The Joiner King

    Yeah, that's the beginning of a wonderful relationship.
     
  8. SiouxFan

    SiouxFan Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Mar 6, 2012
    That's a bit out of context...they did have a pretty good foundation of a relationship from Young Jedi Knights, so it wasn't really as weird as it seems. And I'll forever be mad at Denning for turning what I feel was the most mature relationship from YJK into a quid pro quo arrangement.
    "I would never play with you, Jacen." - Tenel Ka, same book.

    I do agree with Jeeedi, though, that Danni never grew as a character until the search for Zonoma...and then cast aside again. Opportunity lost, I think.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2018
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  9. JeeediMoriah

    JeeediMoriah Jedi Master star 1

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    Apr 23, 2014
    That's all Troy Denning. He's also the guy who gave us Tahiri hitting on 14 year old Ben, Tahiri having "a physical relationship" with Jacen when she was his Sith sidekick etc. I even had massive problems with Star by Star to be honest. He Rian Johnson'd the entire post NJO (save for the Legacy comics).
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2018
  10. SiouxFan

    SiouxFan Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Mar 6, 2012
    I didn't really mind Tahiri and Jacen's "physical relationship" too much...I viewed it as both of them were trying to find some sort of solace in their world. Had it been better written, we might have even been sympathetic to this 'relationship'. The Ben thing was beyond creepy, though. Moreover, I'd argue that '...hitting on Ben...' is pretty euphemistic.

    Outcome aside, Star by Star was just hard to stomach from a plot standpoint. Not too mention the 'hero-ing up' of Anakin in the books preceding it to make his death more impactful.
     
  11. Darth Invictus

    Darth Invictus Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Aug 8, 2016
    I always felt it was more comfort and solace especially for Tahiri though for Jacen to given that Tenel Ka abandoned him over Kashyyyk.

    It wasn't written or portrayed very well but it could have been.
     
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  12. JeeediMoriah

    JeeediMoriah Jedi Master star 1

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    Apr 23, 2014
    I actually really shipped Tahiri/Jacen toward the end of the NJO. I liked the idea of them having a healthy, normal relationship. :(


    As for "euphemistic"...yeah, I was just being polite. It was erm erotic. [face_sick]
     
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2018
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  13. Darth Invictus

    Darth Invictus Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Aug 8, 2016
    Yeah I think Jacen/Tahiri could have worked well under different circumstances.
     
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  14. Noash_Retrac

    Noash_Retrac Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 14, 2006
    Nah, was too much Anakin x Tahiri. Just seemed wrong for Tahiri to go at it with his brother. She deserved someone that wasn't a Skywalker or Solo after what happened to Anakin. Didn't mean she couldn't interact with the Solos, but she deserved someone else.
     
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  15. Dawud786

    Dawud786 Chosen One star 5

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    Dec 28, 2006
    Starting Enemy Lines 1 Rebel Dream.

    Sum up the first few pages: "he suited action to words."

    Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
     
  16. Dawud786

    Dawud786 Chosen One star 5

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    Dec 28, 2006
    It's been a while since I have read any Allston SW. His location tags on the chapters in Rebel Dream now put in a kind of Rogue One mindset, though I cant remember of he did this in X-Wing. Either way, man would i like more Star Wars movies or TV like Rogue One, because it feels like the spirit of what Stackpole and Allston did with X-Wing and their entries for NJO.

    Edit:

    Just finished chapter 2. From this, i hope Abrams has the sense to bring Denis Lawson aboard for IX and give Wedge a big role as general of the Resistance. The speech Wedge gives on Borleias could readily be adapted as a speech to the Resistance.

    Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
     
    Last edited: Apr 9, 2018
  17. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

    Registered:
    May 9, 2000
    [face_laugh]

    What I really resent is the fact that all the drahma prevents us from sensibly discussing the relative merits of Jag, Kyp, Zekk, Finn, Lowie and Mirta...

    Agreed.

    I have a suspicion, given the punishingly short lead-time that VP officially got, that much of the novel was drafted before the plot corrections came back from GL, and hastily rewritten afterwards - in other words, Danni and Jacen's plotline was originally an A/T plotline - the green-eyed blonde looking significantly at the sunset at the hippy space camp on the jungle planet known as Something 4, who gets captured and a bit brainwashed by the Vong and rescued by her Solobrat OTP.

    In other words, Dani is a Tahiri expy, and suffers as a result (especially when we got Conquest, which put the plot the right way up again using the correct characters).

    FWIW, if the purported leaked third draft is accurate, I also suspect that similar problems affected the twenty-year development hell of the Ep.VIII script, with the result that Jaina got turned into Rey while her piloting skills and half her plot became a random male character, and people wondered why the fandom ended up shipping Stormpilot. :p

    This. A missed opportunity in REBELS, too.

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
  18. Darth Invictus

    Darth Invictus Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Aug 8, 2016
    I honestly disagree with the notion Danni is a Tahiri expy. They really aren't alike at all except being blonde.

    For one Danni is a bit older and more mature than the solo children as they stand at the beginning of the NJO. Second I always interpreted her to be only mildly or moderately force sensitive, three her scientist/intellectual background. She isn't just another Jedi academy trainee-she has had a life apart from being a Jedi.

    So they may have superficial similarities in appearance but they aren't remotely similar in terms of characterization.
     
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  19. Jeff_Ferguson

    Jeff_Ferguson Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 15, 2006
    VP originally having Anakin and Tahiri rather than Jacen and Danni? Nah. Save for a one-line cameo in one Luceno's books, Tahiri wasn't on the NJO planning team's radar until Knightfall was canceled and Greg Keyes was tasked with writing a duology about Anakin. He stated in an interview with Nathan Butler's Chronoradio that including Tahiri was his choice and not any sort of directive --- he realized that he could either take Anakin's past into account or completely ignore it, and he chose the former. Sure, it's not far-fetched to assume that Jacen's storyline in VP was originally Anakin's, given what we know about the Anakin/Jacen switch, but it wouldn't have been Tahiri --- it would have been a slightly younger Danni. The YJK/JJK characters weren't set to enter the mix for quite some time yet.

    Salvatore's statements in interviews like this one also cast doubt on the idea that either he or the planning team wanted to bring obscure EU characters like Tahiri back right in the first volume.

    Besides which, was VP's writing time really "punishingly" short? Six months or so is pretty standard for SW books, as Luceno's mentioned in quite a few interviews. With the NJO planning meetings taking place in early '99 and VP coming out at the end of the year, it's not really anything to gasp about.
     
  20. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    @Darth Invictus @Jeff_Ferguson - I agree that Danni is not simply a carbon-copy character, but I suspect that her origins as a character are not independent, making her an expy in the sense of being spun off as an adaptation of another character; my reading is that the plotline was initially an A/T one, that GL's changes to the outline caused the hasty substitution of Jacen and a scientist with only incidental Force abilities; this made Dani her own character (in other words, I agree with Darth that she is differentiated as a character on the page), but her expy origins (and the fact she wasn't Tenel Ka) had an impact on the fact that she failed to really convince as a love-interest for Jacen, and that this ultimately led to her getting her own plotline as the random science girl...

    Now, yes (as Jeff says), part of the idea behind VP was to provide a jumping-on point that would be very approachable, but the idea that they'd give Anakin Solo a green-eyed blonde Force-sensitive love-interest at hippy space camp on a jungle world called Something Four and introduce her looking at the sunset and thinking how different that sunset is from the one on her homeworld and not use Tahiri seems... well, amusing. Because that would just be a pointless Tahiri expy. ;) Just like they used Mara and Kyp where appropriate, I'd imagine they'd use Tahiri where appropriate.

    And if Keyes intuitively reverted to the original setup plan without actually having any cues to do so, and wrote my favourite STAR WARS novel in the process, well, that's just Keyes being a preternaturally good novelist. ;)

    As to the VP writing time, Salvatore seems to have officially had just three months, September '98 to November '98. From the interview with Rostoni and Luceno, the NJO planning-meetings took place in March and May '98, after which they took "several weeks" to draw up the series plan and submit that to GL for approval (i.e. June or July), and the response from GL came back while VP was "already being outlined", which at the very least means that the book was planned with Anakin Solo as the protagonist... and given the tight deadline, possibly when writing was (unofficially) well underway...

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
    Last edited: Apr 11, 2018
  21. Darth Invictus

    Darth Invictus Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Aug 8, 2016
    I do wonder regarding Anakin and Jacen as protagonists-I recall in vector prime Anakin and Jacen have what is in essence a debate about what being a Jedi means-Anakin is the action hero and Jacen the sage or philosopher-and they fight as teenagers often do. And Jacen wins-not martial Anakin.

    That tells me they were taking the NJO in a moral philosophical direction from the start or at least I hope they were.
     
  22. Jeff_Ferguson

    Jeff_Ferguson Force Ghost star 5

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    May 15, 2006
    This still requires huge leaps. Danni doesn't become a potential love interest for Jacen until Onslaught; VP has Jacen and Jaina rescuing her and one of her co-workers because they're young and brash and think they can do no wrong. Do you really think that Tahiri could have played the role that Danni does in VP --- a young adult, accomplished scientist whose full-time job is to stare at the edge of the galaxy? If not, do you think that Salvatore hastily invented the whole concept of the ExGal society in a last-minute rewrite? No, of course not. You're grasping at surface comparisons without looking any deeper. Besides which, you're mistaken about the planets --- Danni and ExGal are stationed on Belkadan, not Helska IV. The latter planet doesn't come into play until later in the book.

    And the idea that the planning team were going to have the Vong conquer the Jedi Academy in the first book is pretty unbelievable, too --- if they had been hastily forced to delay that until six books later, it would have necessitated a huge restructuring of the entire series and a rewrite of the series bible. Given how many details people like Sue, Shelly, and Luceno have revealed about the planning of the NJO, there's no reason that they would never have mentioned something that consequential. Ditto Salvatore; he's spilled many beans about the writing of VP.

    It's an interesting theory on the surface, but it falls apart at the slightest bit of inspection. Sorry.
     
  23. Darth Invictus

    Darth Invictus Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Aug 8, 2016
    I believe Jacen was somewhat attracted or smitten with Danni even in vector prime though nothing really came of it.
     
  24. Xander Vos

    Xander Vos Jedi Master star 4

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    Aug 3, 2013
    Reading through all of this discussion is motivating me to re-read the NJO when I get through by backlog of books.
     
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  25. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    Actually, Jacen rescued Danni single-handed (setting up the pre-planned Jacen/Danni romantic angle), and the guy held captive with her was not "one of her co-workers", but Miko Reglia, who was there because the plot needed a Jedi padawan to get broken. Yes, a random co-worker would have made sense, but there's only one hippy space camp where you get Jedi padawans as random co-workers. ;)

    Do I think she actually does much science in that novel? I don't really recall that being much more than background - see below for more on that point...

    Yes, I absolutely do think that. We know that Salvatore invented the whole concept of the Yuuzhan Vong in a last minute rewrite/replan in August/September '98 (complete with the whole concept of them being extra-galactic aliens, replacing their original characterization as Dark Jedi / Sith from the Unknown Regions, which, you know, did not require ExGal as part of the plot). :p

    ExGal 4.

    Helska is a Stroiketcy expy. ;)

    I don't see that at all. Remember, the original plan was to have the YV in the third paperback set being at Dathomir. I suspect Yavin 4 may have been Keyes' idea. If anything, the lack of any YV attention to Yavin 4 before Keyes came on board is the puzzle, a puzzle which would be explicable if the Jedi Academy had originally been handled in VP, and then simply been set to one side amid all the replanning.

    And especially because the bad guys were originally plotted as Dark Jedi / Sith, I'd say that a raid on Yavin 4 would be absolutely a sensible thing for them to do at the start of the NJO (especially if they're Sith, and, you know, want to drive the Jedi out of the Sith Temples?) - they don't have to occupy the system in any serious way, just attack the padawans; and that approach seems doubly credible to me considering that this was the book where Jacen or Luke was slated to get vaped.

    Now, one thing we do know is that this book was originally planned with Anakin as the hero... so, as I said to you already, do you think they'd give Anakin Solo a green-eyed blonde Force-sensitive love-interest at hippy space camp on a jungle world called Something Four and introduce her looking at the sunset and thinking how different that sunset is from the one on her homeworld and not use Tahiri...?

    Because how would that not be an unnecessary expy...? o_O

    EDIT: I suppose there may have been an intervening phase where they planned to vape Anakin in that novel (in the Miko role?) and sort-of-substitute Jacen rescuing Tahiri (ugh. Just ugh. Do Not Want), but that would have been part of the rapidly-evolving replanning process involved in starting out with an Anakin Solo narrative and then substituting what became a Jacen/Danni plan...

    (And a quick wave at @Darth Invictus and @Xander Vos because I don't have much intelligent to say in response but wanted to acknowledge what they said!)

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2018
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