Lit General post NJO Discussion thread.

I dislike the council. I preferred the NJO council.

 

The Denningverse convinced me that Dark Empire should’ve gone like this:
In issue 2, Palpatine reveals to Luke that Yoda was actually a rival Sith Lord training Luke to become a Sith, and then Luke has a vision of himself killing Han if he doesn’t turn to the dark side, but tries to kill him later anyway.
Then in issue 6 Leia tells Luke to “die already” while they’re fighting and then kills him.
And then in NJO, Leia speaks to Luke’s force ghost who tells her the real reason he turned to the dark side is because he had a vision of Anakin Solo turning to the darkside and joining forces with alien invaders (Yuuzhan Vong) and was trying to prevent that future from happening. Even though we never see that in Dark Empire.

 

Is Luke also trying to save his son who is destined to rule over the galaxy?

 

Hey, Ben was a candidate to be the Dark Man.

I can buy it.

 

Except he actually isn´t as some comics show the wars just go on in the future and said son isn´t even mentioned in them....

 

To be honest, LOTF, and Mara's death to give Luke manpain in particular, is such a universally acknowledged "jump the shark" point for the EU, or at least the novels, that I'm sometimes surprised that the "Bring Back Legends" movement got as large and vitriolic as it did. Even people who didn't mind Chewie's death, or Anakin II's, were revolted!

 

Also a "woman in fridge" moment.

 

Is it? Usually that inwokes the villian going after the woman in question. Him seeking her out to hurt the hero. Here its the exact oppositte Mara was the one who choose to go after Jacen. It was her decsision that saw her killed, in self defense no less. She wasn't really objectified she was an active participant in the plot.

 

If you're going very strictly then yeah, but fridging has also widened to cover killing off a female character for the purpose of creating drama for a male character.

 

Especially one who was EXTREMELY POPULAR. Granted any fridgeing is bad but also added on that Mara Jade had become quite the popular figure in her own right.

Granted i'm not above killing popular characters in principle but in this case, just seems to send a lot bad messages .

 

It’s pretty convenient for Jacen that he got to count killing the Aunt he never really liked anyways in what could sort of be construed as self defense as his big Sith sacrifice.

Well, I get why Jacen was willing to say that it was but Lumyia really shouldn’t have bought it. They both knew exactly who met her criteria, and it wasn’t Mara.

 

Jacen should have killed Tenel. If you have a character say I would kill anyone except X then they have to kill X. Especially if it's a sacrifice.

 

Han and Leia make more sense, I think. Or one of them anyway. Tenel Ka doesn't work, due to the Allana motivation(even if that isn't really established until the third book or so).

(Also I'd think Jacen would hesitate a lot more, and it would affect Allana's future in a way that probably would work according to his aims).

 

The one person Jacen loved the most and was utterly unwilling to lose was Allana. To me everything Lumyia claimed about why the sacrifice was necessary pointed right at her in big neon letters.

Obviously Jacen was never going to consider it. But Lumyia should have realized before she concluded that his training was over and went to commit suicide by Skywalker that it meant he wasn’t anywhere near as committed to her ideology as he thought he was.

 

Yeah, but the whole point of what he was doing was to protect his daughter, so sacrificing her wasn't going to happen...he's not Stannis. Of course, this 'sacrifice' ignores the fact that we have no record of other 'sacrifices' the Sith had to do. Who did Maul sacrifice? Lumiya? Vader?

 

There was a part (in revelation, I think, but it might have been invincible) in which Jacen was thinking about the sacrifice and said he tried to pretend Mara was his sacrifice but actually it was no longer having Allana.

 

They didn't need a sacrifice, because they didn't have tassels. The "sacrifice" bothers me more in this series than most anything else (as a self contained series - in the context of previous books there is at least one thing definitely worse). It is exactly what @AusStig said, the only way it is meaningful development for the character is if he sacrifices someone he was not already willing to. The books clearly establish this as Tenel Ka and Allana. This sets up an opportunity for them to have their cake and eat it to - he can kill Tenel and be still unwilling to kill Allana. If I didn't already strongly believe this (and I did), reading Deceived would have really driven it home.

 

See I just think the idea of the sacrifice is silly. It just feels too video gamey to me. Especially the way it actually plays out in the series.
Jacen has to sacrifice someone he loves in order to reach level 50 Sith Lord rank, which he does at the end of Sacrifice while looking at himself in the mirror.
And then in the next book he’s magically unlocked super Sith battle meditation. I guess the sacrifice gives you the highest rank and a new ability.

 

There's a reason my headcanon pretty much cuts off after The Unifying Force. But "bring back Legends, except for this, that, and the other thing" is harder to fit on a bumper sticker, so...

As far as I was concerned the expanded universe kind of cratered after 2005. TCW turned out great, but mostly as the first act of the new canon - try to fit it in with all the preexisting Legends stuff and you mostly just get a headache.

 

One of the benefits of the reboot is it allowed me to enjoy TCW far more easily.

 

Lumiya didn’t ever know about Allana, from what I recall. Or Jacen’s visions relating to her. If she had, she might have treated the sacrifice subject differently, or dealt with Jacen as an apprentice in a very different manner.

 

She only discovered the truth at the end of Sacrifice
From what I remember she was even sad for him

 

I found the exact excerpt


Oh, Jacen, you had a child with Tenel Ka.

Lumiya now understood his fear and desperation. She thought of all the conversations she'd had with him about immortalizing his love, and suddenly realized who was in his mind when he looked so utterly tortured and desperate as she explained that he had to destroy what he loved most.

It explained everything. Lumiya never thought she could pity someone again enough to weep, but she found her vision blurred by tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks.

She settled in for a long wait in a state of mental silence, not even wanting to occupy herself with getting to know this extraordinary ship. She'd need to be there for Jacen after this. It seemed insultingly banal to kill time when he was about to make a sacrifice that almost no mundane being - or Jedi - would understand or forgive.

Yes, it was a very high price indeed.

 

As @Riv_Shiel notes I think the SWTOR Darth Malgus tie in book Deceived actually does a better job going into logic of why a Sith would find a sacrifice like this necessary. It’s kind of like the perverse dark side mirror of Jedi non attachment, but instead of letting go of what you fear to lose it’s just straight up killing what you fear to lose. Then nothing can be used against you or distract you from what needs to be done(tm).

 

Hmm...I had forgotten that passage. Interesting, it seems she thinks he was going to sacrifice Allana.