Lit General post NJO Discussion thread.

That happens all the time, people suffer for the actions of their governments, like the Axis in ww2. Most of the people who suffered under the Empire were also innoccent, people like Kyp an his family. Yet no one cares about them, as soon as someone turns around and gives them a taste of their own medicine they are treated as WORSE.

Kyp feels bad for the people he killed, it's a lot. But he didn't start it, the Empire did, they shot first.

This government, which the people support evidently, is still loyal to the Empire, still loyal to idea that the murder of planets is ok, so why not apply it to them?

Also if the academy is the key thing of Caridia (which all indications say it is), then those numbers are a joke, and given that the academy was running the planet at the time, that means either; 1, the numbers are wrong
or
2, the people support them and the Empire.

So it could a planet of Imperial diehards, or the numbers are wrong?

Also this doesn't have much to do with the thread topic. I am happy to leave it (since people are getting upset by this)[/QUOTE]

You literally justified war crimes, and played down that most of Kyp’s victims were non combatants. The other side being a bigger ******* doesn’t make you committing mass murder ok.

October 7th was still a crime even if the IDF routinely spent 75 years being brutal savages with the tacit approval of the Israeli populace

 

Taking swipes at people for assumed real world political slants should not be happening on this topic.

 

Australia for the win I'm a proud Aussie of all three descents -- indigenous, settler and immigrant

And yet it does. Unfortunately, with how polarised the world has been since the Obama Presidency placing a divide based on skin colour, it's only gotten worse. I have however had to keep my more conservative views to myself.

 

Fair enough. My point was that one side doing terrible things doesn’t excuse being terrible back.

 

Something I wish we got more of in FotJ was the exploration of other force cultures by Luke and Ben, it was really fun in the first 2 books and the 4th. I wonder where else they could have gone? Haruun kal maybe, I know it boomed by the Empire.

Or maybe the Voss? Or would they not know about SWTOR stuff much.
@Iron_lord

Sci-fi writers having no sense of scale might also be a factor, or who knows, Star Wars does sometimes struggle with scale (1.2 million clones anyone?)

 

I briefly met the chef Jean Georges Vongrichten yesterday who Del Rey took the name of the Vong from. I wonder if he’s even aware of that.

 

I thought it was a restaurant?

 

That NEVER made sense to me

 

A delegate from Haruun Kal was present in Sacrifice. So it's still habitable by 40 ABY.

 

An interesting video looking at fallen heroes (and how they fall)


Which I feel shows why LotF not only wasted Jacens fall (since no one even pauses to reflect on it) but also why it doesn't track with the prescens, ie the NJO, where Jacen is rewarded for love empathy and surrendering to the force.

 

One thing I do like about LOTF is the entire vibe of the second galactic civil war.

In the clone wars-you have the visual contrast between the separatists(droids in mostly bronze or silver) vs White clad clones with Jedi wielding blue or green lightsabers. The rebel alliance-vs stormtroopers.

The SGCW has I’m not sure-a more melancholy and less flashy aesthetic? Corsec and GAG troopers mostly wear the same armor. And the main factions are all mostly a bunch of politicians, generals and ambitious bastards of one stripe or another. Barring the Jedi of course, and the Hapans.

Most SW wars have distinct visual palettes-Sith and Jedi dress in different robes and have different colored lightsabers, clones and droids, and so on-but the SGCW feels I dunno? More real? In the sense all parties aren’t nearly divided by something as simple as a visual cue. That’s partly because it’s mostly a space war, but whenever I think about it-I always get a distinctly different image than the other famous wars of SW. because it lacks the sort of clear visual distinctions they have.

(Well given both parties tend to wear darker colors-black and grey and the like-it adds to the grim atmosphere-there are no heroes of purest light here).

As for Jacen’s fall-I think a lot of that comes down to the way LOTF was written. If it had a single author, even Denning-you’d see characters stop and reflect more on what is happening-rather than three authors all obligated to advance the plot, while focusing on whatever elements interested them most.

 

I like that the Confederation feel like a real alliance of different rebel groups, it is 'real'.

As for the fall, well I think people needed to react to it, there was almost no reflection, maybe one line where people talk about when Jacen went bad, I THINK it is from Tempest, when Han says they should have dropped him out the window when he was born.
Otherwise people just ignore it or treat him as just an enemy. When a hero falls it CAN lead to a lot of questions, but these deal with the subjective elements of morality, things Denning especially (and Star Wars generally) had NO interest in dealing with, so they just ignore them.

 

The SGCW somehow to me combines both a sort of grim Shakespearean fatalist tragedy, and a space RTS game-what with all the admirals and fleets and the like. It has a unique feel or vibe. I’m sure @Sinrebirth can describe it better-but there’s something about it, which just sticks out in my head. The mixture of grand maneuvering and strategiums left and right-by men and women caught up in the logic of war, and the on the ground GAG house raids, the assassinations and the duels.

But yeah, I agree. I don’t have an issue per we even with Jacen’s family coming to the terrible conclusion he’s irredeemable. But this should have been a process-a long grieving process where his family tries to process what’s going on, and eventually decides “enough is enough”.

You get the sense his family has come to this conclusion-but we never really see it in motion. It’s just “Jacen is a bit controversial” too “we have to stop him”

LOTF in a lot of ways can be described as a tragedy-but the middle part is basically cut out.

Which is why I think it comes down to the structure in which it was written.

 

LotF has a lot of good PARTS, but it is lesser than the sum of it's parts, alas. I think all the parts don't have enough time to breath and so they all come across as half baked (see the ending of the war, offscreen and with no reflection on the issues it started over, people leaving over 'imperial like over reach' and shouting 'the empire's back' should NOT be ok with an actual Imp running the galaxy.

I think it is also a tragedy on fast forward.

 

There are moments in LOTF that I think if the plot had been developed further-more meat on the bones as it were, would have a much stronger emotional impact.

Mars going after Jacen, Jaina grimly taking the order to fulfill her destiny, the breaking of Ben Skywalker, and so on. You get the feeling it has elements of a great tragedy-there are definitely scenes that if the preceding material had been up to snuff, could be amazing.

I like LOTF-more than I used too. As I’ve gotten older, and more pessimistic, less pollyannish about life-I think it’s grown with me.

Do I deny it has some glaring flaws? No. But I can see much like the prequels-there is a roughly hem diamond in the muck. Which makes it so frustrating.

 

I think, just to be brutally honest, better authors could have made a better story, some one like CL Werner or Dan Abnett could make better use of the parts. Even Traviss (if banned from writing about Mandos), could be better, Alston did well with his part, but either they needed more books or maybe more time to write them? Either way it rushed, a lot of stuff.

 

Dan Abnett would have done an amazing job integrating both the Jedi/force/family drama and the political and military maneuvering we see in LOTF.

(Integrating those two tracks together isn’t easy, and a lot of SW writers struggle with doing so).

I agree-LOTF should have been a longer series.

 

Lol this is exactly a thought I've had a few times. It's a shame she built such a dogmatic and extremist view of Jedi/Mando lore in her novels because other than that her writing is superior to most

 

That and her tit for tat with Troy Denning.

 

The more time passes, the more it seems to me like a feature, not a bug, non-mainstream views of authors can provoke interesting discussions (Rise of the Red Blade was a breath of fresh air in that regard), especially when they have valid points (and clones in fact being slaves is one of them). IMO, the biggest problem with Traviss' Mandalorians is that they are simply too badass and powerful, so there is no real danger for them (while live-action series sadly went to the other extreme, Jango Fett: Open Seasons continues to have the best description of Mandos).

 

Compare to 28-year-old Tahiri "interrogating" 15-year-old Ben in Invincible by Troy Denning, that's just funny.