Books A/V DARK DISCIPLE (Ventress/Vos novel) (spoilers)

Even so, that doesn't change the fact that, the way the scene was written, it came off as partner abuse.

 

When enemies are "working together temporarily" and suddenly one of them gets all secretive - the others can be expected to get worried though.

 

What, again?

 

The scene could certainly have been said to be insensitively portrayed though.

 

If all authors are judged by that one insensitive thing they wrote that one time, nobody would be reading any author ever again.

You can bet with all the backlash she got, she won't be touching such controversial scenarios again in a Star Wars novel anytime soon.

 

I'd be interested in seeing what, if anything, she's ever said about that scene and the aforesaid backlash.

Anyone know of an interview or something, where it came up?

 

I used to think that scene was more of a Twilight correlation, but Fifty Shades of Gray is also a very disturbingly apt comparison. *shudders*

 

I haven't read the book in question, so what's the deal with the scene with Ben and ...?

 

Well Fifty Shades of Gray is a Twilight fan-fic.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot.

 

After the Jedi captured Vestara (a young Sith from a Lost Tribe of the Sith strike team), the Sith ended up striking a deal with the Jedi to work together against something vastly more dangerous to both sides than either were to each other - Abeloth.

There's a lot of scheming, betrayal, and so on, but by the time of Ascension, Vestara is on the run from the rest of the Sith, and has taken refuge with the Skywalkers - who don't trust her but are willing to entertain the possibility that she's redeemable.

Ben finds Vestara doing something on the computer in the middle of the night, because he can overhear her crying, enters just in time to see her delete everything, gets extremely suspicious when she won't tell him what she's up to, and there is a fight:

The door slid open, and Ben stood there, bleary with sleep, concern on his face." Vestara, I - what are you doing?"
Frantically, she rushed to delete the file, then turned, startled and angry at his intrusion.
"What are you doing, Ben? Walking into my room at this hour?
But she couldn't distract him. He had suddenly become very, very awake, and he sprang for the computer. She shoved at him, and he whirled on her.
"What were you doing?"
"It's none of your business," she said heatedly. "Why are you even here?"
"I heard you crying, and you didn't answer when I knocked. I got worried, so I overrode the lock," he said, his voice hard and angry and cold and sharply at odds with the tenderness of the words. She was taken aback, and as she blinked, she realised that there were indeed tears clinging to her dark lashes.
"Apparently I didn't need to be concerned," Ben continued. His hands shot out and gripped her wrists. "Move."
Embarrassment, hurt, and anger rushed through her. Her eyes narrowed, and she Force-shoved him back. Not expecting it, although he should have, Ben barely reacted in time to keep from slamming against the bulkhead. He turned in midair, landed, albeit imperfectly, on his feet, and lifted a hand sharply. To her complete shock, Vestara felt an invisible hand crack across her cheek. He had used the Force not to defend himself, or to restrain her, but to strike her in anger.
Her face stinging from the invisible blow, she flicked a finger and her lightsaber sprang to her hand. Ben had gathered himself to leap at her and had to twist his body sharply as she swung, the glowing red blade singing its unique and unmistakable song as it sliced through air. Vestara pursued, forcing her body to calm, even though she was trembling with outrage.
A whirling kick that she should have seen coming a kilometer away knocked the lightsaber out of her hands. Ben extended a hand and it flew to him, and Vestara had the unique sight of Ben Skywalker, Jedi Knight, standing in a dark room with his angry features lit by the red glow of a Sith lightsaber.
She sprang toward him, but he lifted his left hand and the pillows rose to attack her with soft, harmless vigor that nonetheless blocked her vision and pressed in close to her face, smothering her. The precious second she struggled against them gave Ben all the time he needed to pin her against the bed and use the Force to swathe her in the bedsheets.
She struggled against him for a long moment, then suddenly sagged. He stood, catching his breath, his face still illuminated by the scarlet glow, then extinguished the lightsaber.
"Now," he said, "I'll let you up if you tell me what the stang you were up to."
"Just go away, Ben, it's got nothing to do with you. It's personal."
"Everything and nothing is personal with Sith," Ben growled. He moved over to the computer and frowned. "Where is it? What were you working on?"
"I deleted it."
"Now it's my business."

 

Was a different name as the fan-fic though.

 

Much like an infamous scene in Invincible that never gets any better.....

Though there was a nasty line of "development" of telekinesis towards being used as casual physical strikes which the films' depiction doesn't back up. I've a hazy recollection of Jaina force-shoving Jag too, seemed to become a default attitude of "I can use the Force so that means I can whack muggles and say I didn't touch them!" Great.

 

Fury wasn't it?

 

Denning had Kyp do it to Corran - who's not a muggle but more of a Squib - at least when it comes to telekinesis.

 

No idea, I'd bailed by that point on the Dennigverse. It's probably Dark Nest I'm thinking of but time has mercifully annihilated my memory of reading that!

 

It was Dark Nest, I recall, from my recent reread of my novel collection.

 

Why would you need to reread? You're a walking library!

 

The Kyp/Corran thing was in The Unseen Queen I believe.

 

That's how one becomes a walking library in the first place - by regular memory refreshes

 

I believe that telekinetic striking was used before the Denningverse novels, though, right? I mean, the Jedi Knight series had telekinesis used as an offensive move, and the Clone Wars microseries had Windu and Yoda use it in such fashion. Although, I admit, in those previous cases it was more moving the enemy away, never actually causing them harm, while after TFU and the Denningverse, it became more of a powerful invisible physical blow. To be fair, I guess you could say they're not so much striking them as creating a forward momentum of energy that was directly inverse to their opponent's movement, which would effectively be the same as running into a brick wall, in all likeliness. Doing the same thing, only a hundred times harder, would thus be like a locomotive slamming into them.

 

As much as we'd like to blame him for all of the EU's ills, I don't think we can pin this one on Denning. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Force-shove stationary droids in The Phantom Menace; if you can shove with telekinesis then it stands to reason that you can punch or slap with it too.

 

And according to The Phantom Menace video game, all Obi-Wan needed to do to beat Darth Maul was Force-shove him into the bottomless pit.