Lit GENERAL QUESTION THREAD (What to read? Where to start? What's canon? What's not? Duros, etc.)

Hello there, i have a question about Kreia / Darth Traya. Does her fighting stile with 3 levitating lightsabers have a name? I doubt it fits a common lightsaber form.

 

While it dosn't get it's own article, Wookieepedia calls it "telekinetic lightsaber combat" on their Telekinesis page, and lists Kreia's little trick along side other examples of Jedi using the Force to move their sabers.

 

Style-over-substance?

 

I had a question about the ending to Darth Bane Dynasty of Evil. At the end of the book, we see Zannah's hand starts twitching like Bane's. Why does this start exactly? Does this mean Bane was successful in his attempt to take over her body? Or is this because she has started to decay from the dark side as well?

 

from Drew Karpyshyn:

You might think this is strange – an author “spoiling” his own work. But the truth is, I never intended this to cause so much confusion out there. I knew that no matter who won, Bane or Zannah, I would have people angry at me. But I didn’t want to take the easy way out and dodge the question. I wanted to provide a definitive answer… and I thought I did. Yet some readers are still confused, and I feel I owe it to them to provide that closure (even though I know some of them will be angry at me for killing off their personal favorite).

So, who won the final confrontation between Bane and Zannah?

I’ll be honest; I thought it was pretty clear in my writing. I wrote the scene from Cognus’s point of view to keep you guessing to the last instant, but when Zannah proclaims “Darth Bane is gone. I am Darth Zannah, Dark Lord of the Sith and your new Master,” I thought it would be pretty clear.

The whole thing with Zannah’s hand twitching was only to show that some part of Bane had passed through to her. How much – was he still “alive” in some way, or is it just a small part of his identity imprinted on her – was supposed to be the ambiguous part. But I never wanted people to assume Bane had taken over Zannah’s body successfully.

Still, some people interpreted the scene that way. I guess I can see it, but you’re making a lot of assumptions to come to that conclusion. First, Zannah is asking Cognus questions that Bane already knows the answer to. Yes, it could be part of “tricking” Cognus, but that assumes Bane would *want* to trick Cognus. And I honestly don’t know where people get that impression from. Bane WANTED a stronger successor to overthrow him; the only reason he learned the ritual was because he needed to prolong his life if Zannah proved to be weak. Yet somehow people made the jump that Bane not only took over Zannah’s body, but was then hiding the fact from Cognus in order to later take over her body… possibly in a line all the way down to Sidious himself. (That is NOT what I was trying to imply, but a lot of readers went there.)

I’m not sure where this all comes from; I don’t think Bane I ever portrayed Bane as someone who wanted to hide in the dark and steal the fresh bodies of his unsuspecting apprentices so he could live forever even if he didn’t deserve it. That would kind of go against everything I built up about him through the three novels.

The second odd assumption you have to make to think Bane destroyed Zannah is to assume that you are dealing with an unreliable narrator. Once Zannah identifies herself, I refer to her as “her” and “Zannah” throughout the scene. To believe Bane took over, you have to assume that I am intentionally misleading you throughout that scene for a cheap GOTCHA moment at the end. But I’ve never done that in any of the previous Bane novels. The narrator has always played fair with the reader, and I think it would be unfair to suddenly change that in the last few pages of a trilogy. Unfortunately, “twist” endings have become so prevalent recently that I think people assume narrators are unreliable now by default; the narrative paradigm has been flipped on its head. (I blame M. Night Shyamalan.)

I realize this is my fault, of course. My writing is usually very straight ahead; I tend to eschew ambiguity because it leads to misinterpretation. I am usually very explicit about my characters and my authorial intent. In this case I wanted to introduce just a hint of subtlety about how much of Bane survived, but in doing so I did something readers were unfamiliar with, so I can’t really be surprised it through them for a loop.

So, there it is. Zannah won – Bane tried to possess her and failed. But he wasn’t *completely* destroyed… though how much of him remains is something I’m going to leave open for now.

 

Thanks for the info!

 

That isn't quite true. The hand twitch was one of Bane's characteristics that Zannah acquired, how much more of Bane's character Zannah acquired is still ambiguous (as Drew says in his blog post there). Zannah could have been a very different character after the fight with many traits that belonged to Bane. Or Maybe Bane is just trapped inside Zannah as a passenger and the hand twitch is all he can do?

 

There are a few times in history where I wish authors had not given the game away, and left a little ambiguity for readers to consider. But I guess I can't really blame Karps because he honestly didn't mean for any ambiguity to be there. I do wish, however, he had written a fourth book. He had established some interesting plots with Cognus and Set Harth, and I had wanted to see where that was going (granted, I don't think he had a direct idea in mind, but he seemed to be having "fun" writing those characters, so I'm sure he could have done something. Certainly no one else was going to.)

 

How would people describe the Mon Calamaries uniforms?

 

Hmm... they're on the "science-y" side for military attire? That's probably not too helpful but it's the first thing that comes to mind.

 

Hello there! I have a new question. Is there something in the SW Universe (kanon and legends) that we can compare to Halloween? Maybe something from SW Galaxies or SWTOR?

 

Halloween as in paying our respect to the dead; or Halloween as in dressing up and eating candy?

 

In Legends, the Ewok celebrate Halloween:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Halloween

 

Have we seen any humans with notable accents?

 

...essentially every Imperial ever?

 

Standard English is not a notable accent, if we say that so can we just as well say that all the rebels with their standard American accents have a notable accent,

 

Hey, don't blame me for you not defining 'notable'.

 

By 'notable' do you mean 'not any of the various American or UK accents'? Or do you mean completely made up for the GFFA and not found OOU? (I'm not sure what 'standard English' means for you.) If you mean the former, Cassian Andor would be the first human character that comes to mind. SWTOR's Diago Hixan has a pretty similar accent:

 

Jango and his clones?

 

M'thinkin' that there Fenn Shysa fella, he be havin' a bit o' an odd accent er now'n again. But 'twas the "accent" on him, or was it 'em Skywalkers who had 'n accent?

 

If I'm understanding the gist of the question, the Dozas on Resistance are probably the biggest examples outside of Cassian.

I'm not sure there's a reason to separate humans from nonhuman speakers of Basic, though, since we don't know where such accents "originate" IU. For example, would a human with a French accent be described IU as having a "twi'lek accent" or sounding as if they were raised on Ryloth?

 

As a Swed so are both standard British and American English the standard.

In this case the reason is that I'm right now just wanting to know abut humans, that's the only reason for the separation.

Probably.

 

What are the creatures who put 3PO’s and R2’s pilot to sleep in the beginning of The Great Heep called?