Lit Reading NJO...Again

The original idea, which Lucas vetoed, was Vector Prime would start with Luke and Mara already having 3-7 young kids, and then Luke would die in that first novel. Lucas also said Han, Leia, and a couple other movie characters were off-limits too (I think Lando and the droids, but not sure).

When that was vetoed, the authors decided to go with one of the Solo siblings for the midpoint kill, and kill Chewbacca in the first novel instead. There was a short debate if it should be Jacen or Anakin, with whoever isn't killed being the main hero, but contrary to popular rumor it was NOT Lucas demanding Anakin Solo die due to his first name.

 

Hm ok, I've always thought that was the reason. Anakin would have made more sense to have as the hero.

 

Actually, not really. If they had switched, Jacen would have had Anakin's characterization, and Anakin would have had Jacen's characterization.

 

Well then I guess I mean, the persona they gave to Anakin made more sense to have as the hero.

 

But I think the point they were trying to make was that this "persona" was an unrealistic legend that would lead to real kids getting killed, kind of an even more sobering twist on Luke's argument from TLJ. That persona was "generic action hero," it was pre-"I am your father" Luke, and they wanted to show why that doesn't always work and isn't always a good thing. That even if Anakin Solo (or Jacen Solo or whoever) did become just like post-ROTJ Luke, that that isn't progress. That Star Wars is about generations, each building on the other, with its own successes and mistakes, eventual progress even if delayed... not an endless line of clones.

 

Yeah I get that, I just think the message of generations gets a bit undercut when you kill off Anakin.

You could very easily have had Anakin captured and put through the Traitor plot and come out the other side more sobered and aware, much as he became more attuned to the Vong after this duology.

 

It's definitely possible, but since he was one of 3 Solo kids at that point, I think they really wanted to show the true cost of war and of lost potential, as well as the downside of trying to put all hopes in one "savior" figure who's just human (and still just a kid).

When I first heard he died, I was in complete shock, and didn't believe it (I was like 12/13 when the book came out). But there were good reasons, in retrospect.

It's kind of like the "Gwen Stacy's death" moment of Star Wars. Nothing is ever the same again. Forces the reader to go through the grieving process too, especially kids who have never gone through it before, or are in the middle of their first experience with death.

 

Anakin Solo's death also subverted the trope of the traditional swashbuckling, popular with women, martial sort of hero saving the day. If the standard trope were to be followed Jacen would have died and Anakin would have defeated the Vong, likely through his martial strength and valor.

The NJO is really subversive in that regard.

 

No I do get all that, my point above was that you could have had him realise the follies of that trope by undergoing the Traitor transformation. As it is, you have Jacen who questioned the war all along undergoing the torture in Traitor and emerging not significantly different from what he was (at least in my mind). Sure his perspective on the Force was altered, but it wasn't a dramatic shift in persona. To have that happen to Anakin would have been far more powerful.

I also think that Anakin was only set up in that mold quite late in the piece, in this Keyes duology. Before then, whilst he was criticised somewhat for misuse of the Force, he really wasn't particularly centre stage. He was just the object of his father's grief over Chewie's death (which, hey, already showed the issues with trying to play the hero).

 

I believe I read that Salvatore said he would have killed Lando off if he was was given the choice.

 

I firmly disagree-Anakin would not have reacted to Vergere's "teachings" in the same way Jacen did, nor would he likely get the same lessons. Anakin as Vergere might have put it was capable of "destroying the Yuuzhan Vong", he was not capable of "saving the yuuzhan vong" or "transforming them" or "all three"

Jacen learns to choose and act, he learns what it means to be a gardener and to move with the currents of his own deep empathy and compassion.

Jacen works as the hero of the NJO, I admit I am somewhat biased here because I'm a jacen fan through and through, Anakin however was just the traditional swashbuckler hero stereotype.

@Force Smuggler well who would have developed the YVH droids then? In all seriousness, Lando was always a peripheral character in the post ROTJ legends EU-well not peripheral so much as he was distant and only interacted with the main protagonists every so often.

 

Are you sure? The Shamed One mythology of the Jedi as their saviours was born in Anakin's discussions with the Shamed Ones in the fields on Yavin IV. He was known as the saviour of Vua Rapung. He was directly set up as a mythological saviour of the YV.

I don't think Anakin was the traditional hero in the slightest. From the very first book of the NJO he learns what the costs of war are, and the impacts it can have on those around him. He constantly puts himself through hardships and sacrifices for the betterment of those around him. He's also a humble and reasoned thinker, and develops a large sense of his own place in events through the course of the series. He doesn't just rush headlong into things.

 

He doesn't rush headlong into things? I don't know what the Mykr mission was if not rushing headlong into the thicket to solve a problem.

Also Onimi specifically identified the avatar of the god of the shamed ones-Yun-Shuno with Jacen, not Anakin.

 

I don't think it's exactly controversial to say that the EU was held back by the inability to kill off the Big Three.

Anakin could easily have been deified by the YV, because he was basically a better person then Jacen. Anakin's whole thing in the fields of Yavin was that he need to save and help someone, someone who by all rights he should have been fighting. It's a transformation made of his own free will, instead of sadomasichistic torture. Jacen, however, basically jumps straight into the "I'm a Nitzchean superman on whom morality doesn't apply, and have the unique right to decide who lives and dies."

 

I meant he doesn't rush into things without weighing up the consequences. That's what Conquest is teaching him, when he is isolated on Yavin because of his own self-confidence.

He is put through far more tests than Jacen, who basically sits out the first half of the war because he's frozen with indecision.

I'm also not sure you can say that Onimi identified Jacen as the God not Anakin when I'm talking meta-textually. I'm sure the story retconned(/swerved) to Jacen, but the first half of NJO was certainly setting Anakin on that path that very easily could have seen him fulfill.

 

I think its been concluded that the order to kill Anakin instead of Jacen is a myth in any case.

Remember Jacen defeats Anakin in their philosophical sparring match in Vector Prime. Also Jacen gets his save the girl moment-rescuing Danni Quee from being sacrificed. Jacen reaches his nadir in Balance Point and then decides to participate again. Anakin's primary drive is simply not to fail-and in the end he doesn't fail but allows others to succeed.

And if we are speaking metatextually we have to refer back to the tropes and the character archetypes-Anakin would never have really grasped Vergere's lessons, to him Vergere's teachings would have merely been academic or worse words instead of action-because that's what Anakin is-he does before he thinks. Or he only thinks so much as to enhance his doing and justify it within a very standard philosophical framework. Jacen asks "why", he asks "what are the Jedi supposed to be", "how are we supposed to handle the philosophical problem the Vong pose to our worldview?" Anakin never bothered to ask such questions.

That's what makes Jacen an interesting and subversive protagonist-he's a "navelgazer", "bleeding heart" who asks questions and doesn't rush forward with his lightsaber at first impulse. Anakin is about as stereotypical a protagonist as one can get.

 

Jacen doesn't decide to participate fully in BP, in Rebirth he's still undecided. He only actively rejoins in SbS

 

He thrashed Tsavong Lah in BP and had that vision of galactic balance IIRC.

 

He did, but then he still argued with Han in Rebirth because he didn't want to kill Vong.

 

I always figured till his death in SBS that Anakin Solo had never forgiven himself for killing Chewbacca and that subconsciously he was borderline suicidal and had a guilt complex that he hid too well (he wasn't close to Jacen and there was no scenes with Jaina to indicate she was aware). Thus he did risky missions because they had an extremely low survival rate.

That's how I saw it, Anakin had guilt, depression, subconscious suicidal thoughts and low esteem. He keeps thinking back to when Chewie died and he can never get past that and Han's anger for abandoning his "uncle" on a doomed planet (even if - apparently - there was nothing that could be done). And Jacen's words afterwards and actions afterwards would've made it much, much worse. If anything, Jacen is more responsible for his brother's death (and indeed every death post-Fondor) than the Yuuzhan Vong.

 

And, you know, his fascist police state too.

But yes, I think that the Chewbacca note is pretty well on. And I think that a good number of characters see that, too.

 

It was a really well-written follow-up to both Michael Stackpole's books and, more directly, to the Young Jedi Knights/Junior Jedi Knights books of a few years earlier. I'd also argue it's a deconstruction/reconstruction of the latter, which is really great; it's easy to find stories that "deconstruct" beloved pop fiction and its templates, but rare to see any that try to put them back together.

 

Yeah, which I find kind of sad. Well, not necessarily "sad," it's nice that there's a guy in the main cast who's leading a (comparatively) normal existence and doesn't handle galaxy-altering events for a living. But if they were going to do that I also think he deserved a few "Lando" books of his own, set in the post-ROTJ era. There's no way there weren't some good stories to wring out of that.

 

Agreed. Say what you want about the sequels and I have said plenty, but killing off the older generation to make room for the new one is one of the things they unquestionably did right.

I still think the NJO mostly worked as a coming-of-age story for the next generation (especially for Jacen) and the fact that they didn't kill the Big Three needn't have been a fatal flaw - they could've simply taken a step back and transitioned to a less active role at least for the moment, while the next generation took center stage. The post-NJO, as with so many things, is when this went off the rails, because that's not what actually happened.

 

Disagree. There are so many ways the B3 could have been kept away from the action or put into mentor roles without killing them, that they did not seems to me like a wilful chose. Or just inability to think outside a rather small box