Lit General post NJO Discussion thread.

I would frame it more in relationship between the Jedi and government.

 

"What do the Jedi owe galactic government and society?"

"Wrong question, your stupid, evil or possessed for not letting them do as they will."

 

While it is not as obvious as it was with LotF I think there was a conflict between writers in FotJ. Between Alston, who in his first book seemed to be asking the first Question, in his third book he actually criticises the Jedi for taking over the government.

While Denning holds fast to the second. The Jedi are right so anyone who opposes them is wrong.

 

Possible, certainly.

I think we know more about what went on behind the scenes in LOTF, than FOTJ? I don't recall there ever being FOTJ Round Robin interviews?

 

even if they are committing crimes?

If they Jedi wish to be apart of the material world they need to be fully apart of it. The flaw of the PT was that they tried to have it both ways.

 

I actually thought that the PT jedi order was alright in terms of government involvement, until later in the clone wars.

 

I was meaning more that they isolated themselves from the general people.

Serving the government works. So long as they agree they serve the government and not the force.

I prefer the Jedi of Tales of the Jedi, a more informal grouping.

 

What drove me insane about FOTJ was that it basically opens with a conversation between Luke and Daala in which she gets him to essentially admit that yes, the Jedi do act as though they're unbound by the laws of mere mortals and better than the ordinary people of the galaxy, and even Luke has to semi-concede the point. And then the rest of the narrative turns Daala back into a psychopath that hires Mandolorian thugs to murder children, because that's basically the only way you can set up a Jedi vs Government conflict on those premises without making the Jedi the bad guys.

It's basically what Marvel Comics did with Civil War. It starts out with the premise "uh, should superheroes actually be accountable to, I don't know, anyone for the ludicrous amounts of damage that keep happening when they decide to be self-appointed supernatural cops?" Then the entire story is about the enforcement of the Superhero Registration Act, which turns Tony Stark into an insane supervillain running a supernatural Guantanamo Bay so that Cap and his side can remain the good guys. Because if you keep your story centered on the merits of registration in itself, the answer is so obviously "yes, of course they should be accountable" that you pretty much have to give it to the Iron Man side (and, in the process, abolish the superhero genre as it currently exists).

 

Yeah. Within the context of the old canon, TCW was a well-crafted story (well, it became one - bit a rough start), but it was also an attempt to relive the prequel era even more literally than LOTF had, which created a continuity nightmare, while also being just plain annoying when there was a huge gaping twenty-year hole between ROTS and ANH that the post-2005 media should have gotten busy filling instead of insisting on going back and back to the same well-trodden ground.

Within the context of new canon, TCW is the foundation of a new multimedia project, and essentially serves the same purpose for NuCanon that the Thrawn trilogy did for the original expanded universe. It introduces new characters who quickly become as important to the fans as anyone from the movies if not more, it lays a lot of threads that future works like Star Wars: Rebels, The Mandalorian, and The Bad Batch pick up again in different eras, it tries to answer some of the questions or flesh out some of the implications that we got from the movies, and it just generally, well, expands the universe in all the best ways.

 

Bingo!

And yet funny enough Nu-Canon is pretty much ready and has been more willing to fill in that gap and even more-so now with Cassian, Kenobi, and Bad Batch

 

Oh, yeah. I'm thrilled that NuCanon has finally started to really fill the Dark Times period, and they've filled it with good stuff too. I'm the first to say they've done things right that the previous expanded universe didn't.

It's just that I'd have liked to see these things unfold under the old canon and with all the people they introduced into the universe, too. I wanted to see Rostek and Hal Horn running their Jedi Underground Railroad while also trying to solve crimes and serve the public in a galaxy under the Empire's boot. And Jorj Car'das or Booster Terrik living through their glory days in the underworld, and Talon Karrde or Prince Xizor rising to the top of it. And Quinlan Vos and Khaleen Hentz trying to keep their heads down and raise a baby while Vilmarh Grahrk keeps trying to rope them into one hare-brained scheme after another. And Garm Bel-Iblis gradually evolving from Imperial senator who thinks opposing Palpatine legally through the political system is the best way to serve to guerrilla leader who thinks the Empire has to be violently smashed if the galaxy's going to see any justice. (Seriously, can you imagine either Zahn or Luceno writing a "Garm Bel-Iblis: Imperial Senator" novel or couple/trilogy of novels?)

There were so many stories just waiting to be told, and not just in any era but the era that's leading up to, well, A New Hope, the film that started it all. And they never got to be, because for years Lucas declared it off-limits in favor of a TV show that never got made and would almost certainly have ignored all of these characters if it had. And now they never will be. To this day, it's infuriating to think of.

 

Which makes me ask, “does making the Jedi accountable do the same?”

A cynical part of me would say yes, but then I don’t see why with sufficient imagination it couldn’t work.

If Daala had been portrayed as rational, reasonable, and fair in the rest of FOTJ-the Jedi come out as villains, who refuse to accept any limit on either their remit or behavior.

I suppose you could write it so-yes the Jedi really do genuinely believe they are superior, they have access to the force and thus have a greater metaphysical understanding then mere mortals, who should just accept on faith the Jedi’s word. (Or at least you could write this as the Jedi belief-not something the reader must accept).

Then FOTJ could explore what that means in practice-when an order of warrior monks with a connection to an all encompassing cosmic and spiritual energy field does think that makes them better or more qualified or outside the bounds of normal people, how does society reckon with that? How does such an elitism comport with Jedi compassion and supposed service to the galaxy? Instead they just made Daala evil, and dumbly so, so there is no introspection on what the Jedi’s role and attitude really is and what it means.

 

The New Jedi Order series already dealt with the Jedi’s role in the galaxy and their relationship with the government. Fotj is just repeating that whole element from NJO cause apparently NJO never happened.
It also seems like FOTJ takes a lot of the original ideas for NJO with the villains being a bunch of ancient Sith attacking the galaxy with one of the younger main characters (which was gonna be Anakin Solo but in this case it’s Ben Skywalker) falling in love with a young female Sith and redeeming her... Well we all know how that last part went in FOTJ with Ben and Vestara.

 

I mean there is the issue with Daala. In that she is Daala. she has attacked civilians. So she is a bad choice to call the jedi out.

Rodan would have been a better choice, since he hasn't attacked civilians.

Heck even the PT explores this, with how the Jedi relate to the government.

re; bold, well that is a dirty word, remember Denning doesn't want Jaina to go the IR cause he couldn't think of any stories for her there.

I mean you could have had the Jedi think they were better than others and learn a lesson, that they aren't. But agin that would mean Luke being wrong which is illegal post NJO.

 

I mean, the Jedi are protagonists but they need not have views or values that comport entirely with the reader.

If Luke makes the argument of “well yes we are special, and governments should let us do whatever and not regulate us because you could not possibly understand our business, problems or internal rationales, if you have a problem with that, well we can get a more pliant government”.

^That creates an interesting conflict.

 

Well that IS the jedi's argument, and what they do in the books.

 

It’s never outright stated though. Only inferred through their attitude and actions.

 

The problem with this, which I believe comes up in the Luke/Daala conversation, is that it's transparent nonsense even by the Jedi's standards. The number of Force-users who have fallen to the dark side throughout galactic history is staggering, and so many of them have been Jedi that you can't even convincingly argue that the Jedi Order instills some special connection to the Force that keeps you from going off the rails.* Even the Jedi can't deny that having access to the Force doesn't in fact make you wiser than the muggles, and the Jedi in all eras have been embarrassingly bad at detecting the warning signs that send a Force-user to the dark side even in their own ranks.

Luke isn't really saying "people who have the Force have better understanding than people who don't, so you should just trust them, even if what they're doing doesn't make immediate sense to you." He's saying "you should just trust the Jedi, specifically. Well... except the ones who fall to the dark side. How will you know that they're falling to the dark side? Uh... when they fall to the dark side, basically?"

* As it happens, I think that's just lazy writing. The Sith are far more interesting when they're their own distinct tradition than when they're simply the Jedi Order's dropouts. And "Jedi falling to the dark side" is a trope that's been done to death, and writers should have found better ways to milk soap opera out of Star Wars long ago. But that's not what happened, so here we are.

 

To be fair, in this universe that's hardly a first. War criminals who are nevertheless redeemed and taken seriously are pretty common here. That doesn't make this instance of it any less bad, but it's kind of part of the landscape at this point.

Ah, but if you give the argument to Rodan or anyone else who doesn't have Daala's, well... Daalaness... then it quickly becomes pretty obvious that philosophically, the "Jedi shouldn't have to answer to you!" school of thought doesn't have a leg to stand on. The narrative has to keep pitting them against outright card-carrying fascists, because if it doesn't, their good-guy status becomes quickly endangered.

 

Should have included this post in my previous response to you, sorry...

The problem is, it can't really be outright stated, because that would strain the average reader's sympathy for Luke/the Jedi to the breaking point. For the reasons outlined above, for Luke to seriously believe that the Jedi are qualified to decide the fate of the galaxy without meaningful input from anybody not only leads him into villain territory, it's simply not supported by what we've seen in the universe up to this point.

So the story keeps having to be return to the well of "oh, Luke and the Jedi would love to cooperate with the New Republic/GA, of course. What a pity that the government just keeps getting taken over by these military fascists and dark wizards and other scary and bad people so that obviously there's no choice but to go against the government over and over."

 

I honestly think there shouldn´t have any more big story projects after NJO for at least like a hundret years. Let the characters enjoy their happy end. The next big project should have been in the KOTOR era or maybe connected to the Prequel movies. I really feel this insitance of the publishers to have Luke Skywalker on their covers hurt Legends in many ways more than Lucas´s limitations or Dennings ideas...

 

The Jedi also played no small part in getting Dalaa appointed CoS in the first place. So the fact that she turns out to be terrible at the job and they wind up having to coup the person they themselves appointed is another mark against the Jedi’s judgment when it comes to these sorts of things.

 

Which is strange considering you think by now the next gen of Jane Jaina and the others are popular among EU fans of the time to make it on their own.

Maybe do The New Sith Wars that led up the Bane Stuff as the next big book series.