Lit General post NJO Discussion thread.

The entire Confederation/Alliance/Jedi/Empire/Hapan/Wookiee/Corellian/Verpine/Mandalorian War was a mess.

I recall and was happy to see what Wedge, Tycho, Iella and Winter were up to.

 

The issue with this aspect of her SW books for me wasn't the different views, but the complete lack of diversity of viewpoints in her novels. A few characters that, for example, see the Jedi as "bad", corrupt etc. is interesting, but virtually every single character in her Mando books ends up with the exact same opinion of them. Even the actual Jedi themselves lol.

Which culminated in "These average Mandalorians could have killed Darth Caedus easily but they let him go for reasons"

 

Karen Traviss clearly had issues with the Jedi as a whole I guess. She sounded like she was writing Palpatine's propaganda in-universe.

Traviss vs. Denning round 2. In the end, Denning wrote a virus that would kill the Jango clones if they stayed on Mandalore (and let the rebuilt Empire get off without being wiped out by the Mandalorians first chance they got) only for Traviss' last book she wrote making all except Boba Fett and his granddaughter Mirta Gev immune.

 

I still for whatever reason, have never really found Mandalorians as a whole all that interesting

 

Yeah, but a Jedi still has a chance to turn into a decent person via friendship with Mandos, even better - by becoming one.

 

If Filoni had made tĥe Sequels im sure he will have created a story of Mandalorians facing Kylo Ren Filoni like Traviss love the Mandalorians

 

Her work for TCW has NO mandos and shockingly it might be her best work. She wrote the novelisation and a couple other books, they are decent. Her TCW book has that Quote from Dooku that turns up online.

Here we go


@Darth Invictus

Yeah, I agree, you need someone to bridge that gap, Denning seemed to do that in Inferno, but the dropped it totally by the last book. I also think CL Werner can weave interconnected stories in good ways (his Black Plague trilogy is a great example of this as events miles and years apart and play off each other).

Yeah if EVERYONE talks the same, everyone thinks of Mandos all the time, a scene in bloodline stands out to me where Ben starts thinking about mandos and how they would react, why would Ben even know this? Just feels a weird place for his mind to go, since he has family who also did grown up stuff at a young age his uncle wasn't that much older than Ben when he died.

 

Star Wars was never fatalist though; Yoda points out the future is always in motion, and Luke falling to the dark side in ROTJ would have been VERY much in character. Even Anakin's fall could have been averted had he and others made different choices. It was NEVER set in stone; that's why it's a tragedy.

I mentioned how in God of War Ragnarok the big reveal is that the Norns can't really see the future; they're just good at reading people and so can guess the choices they make. They predict that Kratos will fall to his old ways and thus all the innocents in Asgard will die; Kratos ultimately manages to resist the urge and holds Surtur back so that the innocents can evacuate, sacrificing an easy victory for the sake of doing what's right. In doing so he changes the prophesized outcome and gives the people who would have otherwise died a chance at life; Odin, on the other hand, refuses to change his ways, which ultimately results in him dying just like the Norns predicted.

 

That was another issue; she also took criticism poorly. While she wasn't entirely to blame for Odds having bad numbers, a lot of the initial criticism was "hey, these numbers are kind of silly"....and she flew off the handle making death threats and comparing people to the Taliban.

I'm a member of stardestroyer.net; while the board could definitely be overly abrasive at times (They tended to feel that intellectual honesty was more important then being polite, and that if you made a dishonest argument you deserved to be called on it), a lot of the points they made about Traviss turned out to be VERY accurate even if they said it in a very harsh way.

 

The future is in motion… but almost every Star Wars prophecy/vision has come true, even if not in the most expected way (but that’s basically all visions/prophecies).

 

I wish there were unabridged audiobooks of Legacy of the Force, I would totally dive into that series after moderately enjoying the unabridged FOTJ books.

 

Again though Luke could have easily fallen both in ESB and Return. It would have been natural and yet he didn’t.

that’s what I mean. The idea that his innate nature would have had him make the right choice is not supported

 

There was no vision or prophecy that he would?

 

Didn't the Emperor see Luke falling?
Of do you think he was just lying.

 

The entire point of the vision in the cave was that Luke COULD have become Vader if he continued down his course, and when he rushes off Obi Wan is certain that things will go badly.

 

I revisited that website not long ago. Never was in the message boards, but read most of the articles posted there. Is it me, or have a bunch of them disappeared?

 

Couldn't say; the owner of the website has somewhat mellowed out (he used to be more conservative) but there was bad blood between SD.Net and members of Jedi Council Forums back in the 2000s. SD.Net always preferred a more analytical approach, and they were also more willing to harshly criticize someone they saw as being dishonest (basically they valued honesty over politeness).

They pointed out (rightly) that many of the WEG numbers didn't match the movies, and since the WEG numbers often came because of easily corrected errors (the Executor length came because someone misinterpreted a line in the novelization) that they should be updated to reflect the movies (which isn't THAT unreasonable a stance). People who were fans of WEG took this as an attack on the sources they liked and often dug in, some of them going as far as to embellish technical bloopers to discredit the very idea that film visuals were reliable (or outright ignoring what Leland Chee said about canon).

 

Wasn't that also the site where the majority of people polled said the Empire were the GOOD guys?

Not really a point over Traviss.

 

In many ways the people who said it were joking, not to mention the poll was taken 20 years ago (during the period the NR had been portrayed as inept and incompetent in the NJO era; much as I liked the series it painted the NR as useless for the most part). By and large many posters actually argued against that mindset (and many of the more conservative posters ended up jumping ship later); some people expressed disdain for the EU because of how they felt it made democracy look bad.

 

We really don't know what the prophecies actually say, just that they were made.

 

I don't know, sounds like you're being dishonest in that argument. Maybe I should be rude to you, after all that is fine if you decide the other poster is being 'dishonest'. (this is a joke meant to highlight how claiming 'they were rude to dishonest people' is a HORRIBLE attitude to have since lying is very hard to prove from posting on the internet, also isn't saying something 'ironically' also lying?)

But more seriously, you are just making excuses for people supporting evil. The only books that painted NR as ineffective were Dark Tide, it just got blown up by fans who WANT the NR to be ineffective to justify the Empire, just like Zahn. The Empire did WORSE than the NR, after losing Ithor it sat out the war only to get wrecked by a small Vong force, but you never hear about that, cause it doesn't suit the narrative.

Denning at least understood that the Empire was evil.

Traviss has an interesting view of things, she seems to get that the Empire is bad, since we see people protesting empire-like policies, but she has Vader be popular with stormtroopers (which I can see, since he only killed officers).

 

1.) Yeah no. In agents of chaos through up through destiny’s way the NR makes a lot of mistakes and is cripplingly inept. Nom Anor says in Traitor that the Empire would have crushed the Vong invasion quickly. So no it wasn’t blown up; the books honestly implied that the NR was weak and that the Empire at its prime would have beaten the Vong.

Quite a few posters disliked the EU because of how weak the NR was made to look and felt it betrayed the spirit of the movies.

2.) Zahn DOES acknowledge that the Empire is evil, multiple times in fact (the Anniversary thread discussed how Survivors Quest deconstructed the Empire apologia.) And given that you made excuses for Kyp Durron committing xenocide (up to and including distorting the text to make ignore that he destroyed Carida out of rage rather then because he felt threatened) it just makes you look hypocritical. You see anything less then a full throated denunciation of everyone and everything in the Empire as apologism, which is just silly.

3.) Actually lying/intellectual fallacies can be VERY easy to prove in some cases

https://steemit.com/life/@logic/how-to-debate-on-the-internet-common-types-of-logical-fallacies

About 20 years ago Thrawn McEwok and other fans of WEG used those kind of arguments to try and discredit the attempts to make the Executor length more accurate. Some of their arguments included:

1.) Over exaggerating and embellishing the amount of visual errors on screen to try and argue that film visuals should be ignored when it came to starship length, as well as ignoring Lucas’s clear stance that film visuals automatically trumped the EU in anything.
2.) Ignoring that the model notes and f/x notes from the movie supported the updated figure, and that the 8km number only came about because someone misinterpreted a line in the ESB novelization (as well as countless other areas where the EU was inconsistent)
3.) Implying that the people who wanted to update the numbers were part of a diabolical conspiracy (note: Sinre Edit: Lets not do personal attacks) rather then just admitting that maybe the WEG guys made a mistake and that it should be updated.

They were VERY blatant, but because they put on a folksy attitude a lot of people ignored it or made excuses.

If someone makes a logical fallacy they deserve to be called on it even if it’s not necessarily polite

 

But there was no prophecy or vision he would.

If he saw anything, maybe it was just him cutting Vader's hand off and standing over him.

 

Arguably the main prophecy of star wars failed. By any contradictory definition of balance that we ever got

If we go by the intended definition of "no more sith" that never happened

If we go by the Mortis interpretation of "equal amounts of good and evil, which is good for some reason" that never happened.

If we go by the "bring back peace" definition it's wrong.

Hell in neither continuity was the Empire even definitively defeated by Anakin.

 

1. From agents of Chaos it is a single highly placed traitor and bad luck that anakin primed the weapon and didn't power it down like Jacen suggested. After that it is Duro (which Nom had infiltrated and then the fall of Coruscant in SBS, where the NR fight well the victory is pyrrhic, after that the heroes win mostly in Enemy Lines and Dark Journey, so the statement "agents of chaos through up through destiny’s way the NR makes a lot of mistakes and is cripplingly inept." is overblown. Also given that the Empire gets smashed harder than the NR by a small Vong force, doesn't to me say it would have done better in the war. Nom is saying that to someone to prove the Gods are with them and helping with the invasion. If the Empire had won he would have said "it was so easy to divide this galaxy if it had still been lead by the Republic and the jedi we would have a much harder time".
2. No he does not. He thinks the Empire would have done better against the Vong (which is provable false, since they fell to rebels and the Vong started rebellions as we see in Vector Prime) and that the galaxy "needed" a firm hand like the Empire to rule to galaxy, that is literal apologism, it is trying to justify the empires brutality. There is not need for personal attacks, I am tired of your personal attacks, I also do not appreicate being told I need to accept apologism for evil, given we are seeing the fallout of that apologism (for the soviet union) in Russia's burtal, genocidal invasion of Ukraine.

I am happy to leave this here as this is not the thread to talk about the Vong war or authors who had no part in the post-njo stories.

here is Denning giving his thoughts on Dark Nest (and bugs)


Turns out Denning has an insect centric world view.