Lit Happy Jacen Solo Day!

General Madine definitely knew of her duties as they met back in her Emperors Hand days in a comic! And given he works in the Intel branch... it would be his duty to inform the relevant superiors! Though, as per comic, they had a mutual deal going it seems. How far that extends though? Nobody knows!

 

I’m just quoting Leland Chee who said Luke “nearly fell” those weren’t my words. That may be a post hoc retcon. But it is what I read.

 

The quote in question:


In the DE comics spanning two six issue series and a two issue series ender titled Empire's End, Luke faced off against the Emperor's clone and nearly gave in to the dark side after his defeat. But with Leia at his side, the reunited Skywalker twins defeated the Emperor's clone.


There's plenty of room for him having dabbled in the dark side with his actions without having gone over completely. Just like Anakin's AOTC killing of Tuskens (including children) didn't bring him all the way over - he still remained loyal to the Jedi Order and the Republic, and still devoted to the traditional Jedi altruistic causes, until ROTS.

 

how many kills does it take till you are evil and fallen? On a galactic scope... few planets do not matter? Personal in person scope? couple of Tusken are irrelevant, or like for Jaina... what is one fraticide... yeah sure... not gonny buy that cheap excuse of a whitewashing retcon.

I mean, anybody giving me a number as answer.. one could point a gun or sword at and say... sorry, if I agree with you, that still means you are expendable. No thx. not gonna happen under my watch!

 

In the context of DE falling for Luke would have been something like killing Leia if ordered to do so. Or Han or his nephew and niece or blowing up Coruscant.

Luke was "undercover" albeit in a dangerous situation. Similar to Ulic in that regard. As far as I can tell, Luke never fully committed to following Palpatine and gave entirely to his rage and Palpatine's way.

 

I would say that what Luke did is still not nearly as bad as what Anakin does in AOTC, sure he might be considered complicit in some of the losses during the war against Palpatine's Dark Empire or even partially responsible for the attack on Mon Cal, but he was helping the Rebels take down the Devastators in secret (and it worked!), i wouldn't make him responsible for those deaths especially considering he wasn't even directly involved, and joined Palpatine AFTER the Devastators started killing.

 

Ah i see, so long as killing is to not blow his cover he is fine?

Seriously, i doubt you understand the full implications of your argument there.

Would you excuse a cop that joins undercover a gang raiding homes forced by the gang to decide which home to enter and thus who to kill to make an example of? Including children etc.?

Your logic assumes just that!

Like it assumes killing does not make you dark if it is unimportant people instead of main cast. That selective superiority thinking reminds me of facists.

Not accusing you of such at all, just saying you are not thinking your argument through till the end.

One can excuse that Luke was under duress and stress and forced to decide, but not that he chose instead of denying a choice and seeking another way to infiltrate Palpatines inner circle. Like when in Rotj he was forced to choose between killing Vader or joining him. He did neither.

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Well, for some reason, this has become the "Luke, Mara and the Dark Side" thread... so this first part is a general response, though I'm going to frame it up with some quotes...

... it's Luke.

This hit me on tuesday evening, all of a sudden out of nowhere - blame the Collective Unconscious, or something...?

Not because Luke is actually a crazy Sith, or because he still has a crazy Sith id in his basement, but because he's trying to fight various reality-warping opponents...

One of the pleasures of re-reading the Bantam novels is seeing the Jedi Temple casually photobombing the narrative all the darn time - it kicks off at the very start of Heir, where Luke's standing on the roof trying to work out what it is about the "Imperial Palace" that he's just not getting; then it sort of bounces around in the background in the Rogue Squadron novels, especially whenever the theme of how Palpatine was able to make people forget his parked Super Star Destroyer and everything about the Jedi gets played; and it shows up again in the Black Fleet books where Luke's rebuilding Vader's castle on the Manarai coast and the Fallanassi are doing their reality-warping hostage-rescue stuff (and dropping occasional hints that they're the same Circle that Domina Tagge was part of, but surely Luke remembers that, no? Well... no?)...

There's an unexplained piece of backstory at the start of Dark Empire, where Luke tells the other Star Warriors that he found something in the Imperial Palace... now I don't think this is simply "somehow Palpatine has returned"... what he found out was that the Jedi Temple is the key to this sort of reality-warping...

Don't believe me? Take a look at the NJO. Borsk blows up the Jedi Temple. And then theres' a whole plotline where suddenly everyone can call it the Jedi Temple, though no-one's quite able to articulate that it's also the Imperial Palace, and the huge Force nexus in the basement breaks out. The lid's back on again in Destiny's Way when Shimrra's new palace is parked on top. And then there's the moment in The Unifying Force where Luke realises that if the Supreme Overlord retains control of the Jedi Temple site, the Yuuzhan Vong will rewrite the past so they were always there...

That's the nearest thing to an admission of what that nexus does. Well, that, and we know from the cartoons that Palpatine has access to the World Between Worlds (though quite what Yuuzhan, Yammka and Ne'Shel are doing photobombing Mortis and Lothal is another question)...

And in the post-NJO, the new glass pyramid replacement Temple is built... and gradually fades out of the plot, until some time under Caedus (soon after the dhuryam gets vaped?) it's just the same old Jedi Temple that it's always been again, and if you suggest that it was once the Imperial Palace, or wasn't there, everyone's just going to give you funny looks...

But while the Jedi Temple's photobombing habit is its own thing, I think the missing link we've missed is that Luke knows (or he does sometimes), and he's trying to reset the plotline - in his sincerity, he's trying to stabilise what he believes to be the true reality, the one where there's a Republic based on Coruscant, a Jedi Order triumphant (and, incidentally, where he's continually blocking Jacen's attempts at flow-walking to change the past)...

But Luke, being Luke, this doesn't always work... no wonder he's cranky with Cade...

We're not looking at a destabilising Sith mastermind, we're looking at Luke Skywalker destabilising things by being Luke Skywalker, not quite knowing what to do and trying his best - like a certain usurping redhead Senator, he's not able to entirely disconnect his agenda from the normative (but actually destabilising) ideas of Coruscanticentric hegemony that he's inherited ("and that is why they fail")...

Because Luke is a dork. We know this. That's why "what happens in Dark Empire stays in Dark Empire" (kudos to ceiran for that phrase), too - because Dark Empire has some industrial-scale reality-warping going on; we can see a switch between Luke's various personas - there's the Luke of Dark Empire or KJA or TLJ, who's the Luke corrupted by this knowledge, and there are the times where he's the hero that he is in the Zahn novels, which is where - through his own work or otherwise - the continuity has reset, and he's who he should be...

Thoughts?

EDIT: Mara. Mara kicks ass, but Mara is misled by Palpatine, and she's also very young - she's a soldier (I want to say "a tactically brilliant stormtrooper") who's given her tasks like all soldiers are - so she's got the excuse that she believed she was doing the right thing, and she's not got the horizon to question what she was doing, or the rightness of her actions; indeed, she's carefully encouraged to believe that she's going good (quite deliberately, I think - her light-side affiliation is part of the point of what Palpatine is doing with her)...

And now I'm slapping my forehead, and saying to myself, "Of course! She was always Domina Tagge!!"

I'll go back and go through them, I want to get this reply to you quickly?

Why are you assuming "we" both do this?

That's like saying the Rebel plan in Return of the Jedi is irrational because the Empire's lying to them, or Luke's desire to fight vader in ANH and ESB is irrational because Kenobi's misrepresented the relationship between Vader and his father. In terms of the evidence Tahiri's given, it's a cogent, sane approach - there's nothing weak or absurd in what she's doing.

Is that discomfort? Actual disagreement? Or just a shrug?

I'm not sure what you're responding to with this...

Jacen was spending a lot of time complaining about Anakin's response, though - you could almost say he's opposing his response on principle (but note, he never disagrees with Jaina, who's doing the same thing at a higher tempo, notably outside the Jedi Order, too - that suggests that Jacen's responses aren't actually that coherent)...

This circles back round to what I was saying early on. Jacen is a contradiction; he's right insofar as he questions the militarism (especially in Destiny's Way where his stance shifts to uncertainty about the whole New Republic and the Alpha Red project), but at the same time, as you say, he's also willing to embrace Jedi violence - in all his lighstaber fights he shows himself to be a tremendously poised and ruthless killer...

The paradox, the contradiction between his lightsaber streak and his morality, is brought home most emphatically by his mass-killing of the dhuryams in Traitor, but there's also that sequence in Dark Tide: Onslaught when he attacks the Yuuzhan Vong base to rescue the prisoners, believing he's being urged to do so by the Force, and finds himself humiliated in a duel and captured by a Yuuzhan Vong who's not just a low-quality opponent (implicitly, Vua Rapuung - there's a throwaway line in The Final Prophecy which indicates that this is the Domain Kwaad damutek, where he commands the guard unit)...

And, as that scene reminds us, his embrace of violence ties back to his desire to be, and to be seen as, a Jedi hero with a lightsaber - a streak introduced as early as his very first scene as a teen in Heirs of the Force, the first YJK novel, where he picks up Luke's lightsaber off his desk, and then guiltily puts it back down...

This sort of thing is where I trace a lot of Jacen's actions to - he's a mess of contradictions and inarticulate drives...

I didn't mention "subalterns" - we never get to see what the subalterns are thinking; but like I said earlier in the discussion, there's their striking characterisation in the Junior Jedi Knights kids' novels, via an inscription where they condemn Kun as an "evil Jedi Knight" who's forcing them to do his things; there's also the discussion of the Yavin texts translated by Streen in Before the Storm, which are certainly not doctrinal "Sith", and which Luke refuses to accept are an actual reflection of Red Sith philosophy, which emphasise their sense of inferiority against the infinite represented by the gas-giant round which they orbit (or possibly just the sky, I suppose; Streen's translation's admittedly a little shaky).

And then, in more recent material, there are the Red Sith proto-Jedi in the Dawn of the Jedi comics, and in SWTORMMPORG, Lord Scourge and Lord Praven both switch sides to ally with the Jedi - Scourge without ever converting to conventional Jedi ideology...

The rest is... just narratives provided by Jedi, fallen or otherwise (at an earlier stage, there's actually relatively little on the motives of the hybrid descendants of the Exiles in the Golden Age of the Sith comics; deliberately or not, their characterisation as villains is mostly played through fear of the Other in the mainline POV represented by the Jedi and the Republic)...

See separate discussion above?

No idea, because I'm not sure what you're asking...

And yet he does everything to elevate his dynasty to beloved rulers of the Galaxy....

On the one hand, I think his human connections do allow him to see beyond his limits; on the other hand, he's being a hypocrite...

Only insofar as I might be said to be playing the Vergere role within the discussion. So, not really, honestly... sorry?

*confused* I'm not aware of any crazy redhead ex-girlfriend with bad communication skills...

And so we return to Domina Tagge. "The circle is complete."

- The Impeiral Ewok

 

Mara was kidnapped at such a young age that she doesn't remember her own parents as anything more than vague shadows, and more than that, she was kidnapped by the galaxy's greatest manipulator, who had pretty single-handedly brought down the Old Republic and the Jedi Order. She was kept isolated by this man and trained specifically to believe that he was all that was noble and good, and that she was doing noble and good things by helping him to help the galaxy. Mara is not merely a child soldier, Mara is a brainwashed child soldier.

Additionally, yes, her light side affiliation is part of Palpatine's purpose for her. He says this openly in BtEH, telling Vader that Mara is neither light nor dark, but rather an experiment. @Bel505 has commented convincingly on my stories that with Mara, Palpatine wanted a tame Jedi, and he cultivated her sense of morality and honor because he could use it. As long as Mara was convinced that she was doing the right thing, she wasn't merely a useful weapon but also a great piece of propaganda. For those who ever interacted with the Emperor's Hand, for her to act in a largely honorable way and always say that she was doing so on behalf of the Emperor himself made Palpatine look good. In SQ, Luke points out that Palpatine actively tried to keep as many Imperial atrocities from Mara as he could, because he didn't want her to start doubting.

Through no fault of her own, Mara was misguided, but she believed wholeheartedly that she was doing the right thing, and she believed that because Palpatine wanted her to believe it. She wasn't dark because he never tried to make her dark. And Mara is not inclined to go easy on herself post-TTT despite that; in VotF she dislikes Luke's idea that because she wasn't acting for her own selfish ends, the acts themselves didn't open her to the dark side, and in SQ she has what she knows to be survivor's guilt, acknowledging that others like Palpatine, Vader, and Tarkin had paid for their deeds with their lives, but she was still here.

Mara's something of a unique case in many ways, but she was never on the dark side, and every bit of Zahn's writing not only attests to this but also explains it. And after she realizes the truth of her Imperial service, she doesn't try to exculpate herself, she just tries hard to rebuild her own life, as pretty much anyone would do.

And now with this Mara detour accomplished, I'm disappearing again, hello and goodbye for now, Lit

 

@Thrawn McEwok

Your reply is as always genius on so many levels!

*Walks past his golden Ewok collection and selects one..

You win a slightly used Golden Ewok for not only reminding us of the Tagge family connection to the Fallanassi, indeed most likely Domina and her secret Forcepowers, and the galaxy changing repercussions of this revelation, but also for the brilliant wibbly wobbly timey wimey WBW Force Nexus doing the timewarp all the time from the Imperial (Jedi) Temple (Palace)!!!

Now the various depictions of the Imperial Palace across sources and illustrations makes sense if the force nexus is a vortex mixing all multiversial timelines and versions of its refits appearing different to each viewer, hidden in plain sight but only for those who can see it (shameless The Shadow reference) as well as being bigger on the inside it seems (like most corellian tech).

Poor Luke went too deep into it in Dark Empire when seeking the palaces depths and secrets and as a result emerged as all versions of himself across all timelines in one!

Lets be glad Jacen never bathed in it. Must be a celestial transformation thingie. But Luke was known to dive headfirst into mysterious vortices and entities... He even took a dip into Waru!

Now I do wonder if Shira Brie is just another alias or cult name of Domina from her Fallanassi time before she took family power. After Shiras injuries she could use Fallanassi illusions to look her old beauty self. Much like in LotF Lumiya uses illusion powers and especially shows her beauty sense and behaves like Domina... Uhoh!!!
Did we ever see both in the same room? Even then.. Fallanassi can do Forcedoppelganger in their sleep!!!

Mara is just her clone then.. or somebody else.

And all this without Maara from the Kemp clones or the other doppelganger crisis in the making. But hey, if Thrawn can seed the galaxy with Fel clone towns, why not some Mara ones too. Or did Domina find a stash of her own clones Palpatine kept? Is Lumiya Tagge really dead?

But beloved redheads aside, hope multiversial Luke remembers who he married and does not likewise switch between ladies.
I mean if he blamed Ben Solo for burning down his academy while he was innocent... Jacen did that once or twice.

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Because I'm magnanimous. This discussion has been ongoing for a month and has had multiple sub threads of debated points. Its only natural we would lose track of them.

Ok, we may have reached something here. I'm arguing from an IU perspective-flow walking as a force ability does not allow what Jacen is selling. Whether or not Tahiri believes it can work-the IU mechanics established are "it doesn't work that way", much like Han's line to Finn in TFA coincidentally. Backwards time travel and changing the past are...not possible in SW. At least not in the way its done in a lot of other sci fi. Flow walking allows one to observe the past and interact with it to some extent, not actually change the course of history. You seem to arguing Tahiri's conviction as such is driven by this hidden motivation-we've disagreed on that, and I won't bring that up-the broader point is Tahiri is wrong. IU what she wants cannot be.

Vergere is willing to question and poke holes in narratives. That's pretty clear from the get go in Traitor-Jacen is dead, no rescue is coming, good and evil are not these external forces making Jacen the protagonist of the play dance one way or another. What you're saying she did here though I disagree.

My point here is the caricature some have of jacen as this pollyannish pacifist dreamer that was unaware there was a war going on and people were dying is false. He didn't protest fighting the Vong in and of itself. His issue was "what are the Jedi supposed to be doing, given the strange spiritual implications here". If the antagonists of the series had been a revived empire or a more "mundane" alien species-perhaps the Nagai or something, Jacen would have been out on the front line with the rest of the order. His uncertainty as to what the Jedi should do are directly related to the Vong-the Vong are a massive wrench thrown into the Jedi's understanding of the force. That in Jacen's view demands reflection and some degree of distance from the mundane events going on (the war).

I agree insofar as Jacen like any other Skysolo with such luminaries as Luke and Han as kin wants to do heroic things. After all, his first moment of glory(then failure) in the NJO is rescuing the damsel in distress, or trying too and getting captured. I think this drive is psychologically separate from his spiritual considerations. Walled off if you will. Jacen wants to be the wandering sage, he wants to understand, to delve into the mysteries of the force. At some level yes he also wants to slay the bad guy and get the girl. These drives are never reconciled, (though arguably Darth Caedus doing what he does for the galaxy and Allana is that) and they cannot be. Or to use prequel Jedi-you can't be Mace Windu, blowing through armies and dueling Sidious in his office and teaching younglings like Yoda does in AOTC. Jacen wants at some level to be both, or well the latter. He has never reconciled them into a coherent framework of action-which I find relatable and normal. Most people don't rationally organize all their drives and desires and harmonize them.

I would argue by and large he rejects "playing the hero" or seeking to be the hero by the timeframe of Betrayal. He's older, more experienced, he has a secret family, and there are problems looming that don't have clear cut solutions that involve dissecting bad guys in two. But then he isn't a youth anymore is he?

The Jed'aii fell to the dark side if I recall. Also the Massassi were slaves and had been altered to be more effective and obedient slaves, well over a thousand or two thousand years since the Exiles. I can't comment on SWTOR as I'm not that familiar with it. Point being-we have little reason to suspect the Red Sith were particularly resentful towards or had vastly different beliefs than their Exile conquerors and overlords.

We were discussing will to power. My example being a man shot in the abdomen-his will being a desire to live, imposing that on his body, and surroundings. A refusal to die, and an insistence to continue, to win-that is the Will to Power(well its a bit more complex than that but Nietzche is oversimplified as it is). You can't reduce my example down any further in terms of complexity of meaning. Sheer Will is irreducible. It is the Ur-motivation. Whether that to be live, to fight, to conquer, to endure-really it doesn't even require consciousness in the barest sense. Animals possess it through instinct alone. Humans however can order their Will beyond their immediate needs.

Not really? Jacen wants Allana to reign because she will (presumably) be good for the galaxy, and herself. Given this is contrasted with her serving Krayt. If Jacen wanted a dynasty he could have found a way to marry TK after taking over the GA and arranged a marriage between Allana and some Chiss scion. Jacen pointedly never thinks this way.

How so?

Lumiya and Vergere met you know, and apparently spent a lot of time discussing the character of certain individuals and the course of the future.

 

What Jacen wants is manifold and changes over time. Good points there.

Jacen wants a girl, he wants to be a hero, he wants to be a wise Jedi in tune with the Force, he wants to be the next Chosen One, etc.

But for each of his goals he got something in the way.
He can't get the girl because he puts the mission and Force first before any love.
He cannot be a hero because Jedi are not warriors.
He cannot be the wise guy and Force Sage because he can't let go of lightsabering about solutions and Anakin always outsmarts him in such wise guy puzzle solving stuff giving him an inferiority complex.
He is not the next Chosen One, or maybe he is, but the full implications he is oblivious about, like Anakin Skywalkers fate had im walk both sides rather than just one and be done with it.

For a time it works to get a girl and be a Jedi, as she is a fellow Jedi.
For a time he can try himself at pacifism and being sage-y, but his lightssaber itch is growing.
For a time the galaxy sees him as a hero whenever he gives in to this itch and defeats Vong saving people, but now his girl is busy elsewhere and his brother is rivaling his fame and at least he feels this is a competiition even if Anakin does not.
For a time Jedi and all cherished him like a new Chosen One, but failing to fill expectations of that role he rather fled from it and shut himself out and off on a sojourn. Like anybody who wants fame and does not want what comes with fame.
So he returns as a Sage, is lucky that the girl gets him at least for a night, he still is cherished as a Chosen One and Jedi Hero...
..and then, well...
.. a secret relationship and fatherhood
.. having not the answers he sought but everyone expects him to
.. new revelations calling his old ones into question thx to Lumiya
.. problems not solveable by lightsaber and him at a loss of solutions for them

it all mounts up to the biggest burnout and midlife crisis the galaxy has ever witnessed and suffered from.

He snapped.

And all his selfs he tried to be can be seen throughout LOTF out of alignment. Not multiple personality disorder, but rather him thrown around between versions he aspired to be.

Protect his family,
save Luke,
serve the Force,
take the dark mantle and burden of others like a Chosen One,
defeat the Sith,
and finally lightsaber away any problem that is adding itself to his growing list of stones in his formerly so clearcut path to final rest and harmony. More and more.. till the point he adds what he cherishes to the lightsabering as it grew to become a problem. Like he is lightsabering away parts of himself that stand in his way, his love for family, his this and his that. Until only there is one bare Jacen Solo at the end, stripped of all attachements except one...

I agree, Jacen is not and never was dynastic. While thinking Allana is good for the galaxy, I see it less as political rule but more a spiritual throne of balance she ascends as a kind of Force Ghandi or Pope (minus the dark side of the Church) to spiritually awaken and change the galaxy for the better.
OneCanon like, kinda to create a new Jedha for all to come and celebrate the Force together. Maybe on Hapes or elsewhere.

PS: While Jacen is not dynastic about the future despite seeing Allana on a throne, he is dynastic in believing that the Chosen One lineage of Anakin/Vader via Luke got to him and made him special. So maybe he indirectly is dynastic, regarding his own need to be special, yet not so much in what comes after him except wanting the best for his kid as any father would.

Lumiya is a Sith, albeit one that went against Palpatine and his Dark Empire. So despite her own rage, antipathy for Mara Jade, lust for Luke, she is not without morals and seems to be a kind of Sith that, despite going to extreme means, has a vision for the future. A benevolent future that has to be enforced but, as some Sith believed, is possible. Like in TOR MMO Sith work together to achieve unity and an Empire and make it work despite backstabbing and rule of the fittest to reach the top. Where Palpatine or others never were such coworker-type Sith, Lumiya is!

Vergere to some is a Jedi, yet free from the PT dogma and more original ancient Jedi in type, despite a Sith apprentice stint and on the run, she never is a true Sith on page and merely Lumiya claimed such with an agenda of her own about the mention. While Vergere can be a Sith, or if a Potentium Follower like her master Thracia Cho Leem, despite refining that ideology and forming her own based on it, Jedi, Sith etc. teachings and more, I think she and Lumiya were finding some common ground. Lumiya calls her a Sith, Vergere sees Lumiya is not all bad and can be worked with, given she went against Palpatine and has a vision for a positive future, just differing in the means to bring it about.

So that explains their connection and talks well I think. In addition to Vergere fooling the Vong regarding Jedi, Sith and their own Forceprogram aka the Slayers.

What is relevant I think is, that Vergere is not perfect, but she made a pivotal error she wants to correct and for which she needs help. Onimi for sure once learned of the Force or trained under her. Her apprentice gone dark and taking the entire Vong into a direction she never intended.
I believe Vergere when going with the Far Outsiders not only studied under the Vong but also taught them. Of the GFFA but also the Force. When she found one especially receptive to her teachings and actually able to find and tap into the Force, Onimi, she taught him in secret. If she hoped to incite a Shamed One Rebellion via Onimi is not known, but Onimi used the Force to manipulate the Surpreme Overlord and took control.
Was it Onimi who took control to prevent Vergere being killed after she stopped being useful to the Vong? And from that on he kept control and it corrupted him? Did he make her a pet to save her life? We know she was more than a pet, more powerful, especially in her interactions with Nom Anor and her indepence. Like a rival even. We discussed this in another topic at length. Onimi needed her to teach or train the Slayers perhaps even, Vong-hybrids with captured Jedi DNA possibly akin to Tahiriina Kwaadveila or other experiments across the war. Slowly building his support and protection, Onimi needed Vergere before he could truly bring a rebellion about. But he needed no rebellion, for he just had personal power, other shamed ones he did not care about. Typical as he was elite before being shamed already himself. So Vergere's hope in teaching him in the first place failed due to that.

Now she sought help and found it in not only Lumiya but also Jacen Solo both. The Vong looked for the Sith as the Jedi's enemies were potential allies to them. But Vergere was clever and used the talks for her own talk with Lumiya in private. When though? Given Lomi Plo and Welk failed to establish contact for her given their fate, did Lumiya and Vergere meet AFTER SbS??? Or rather before she sent Welk and Lomi to the Vong for what purpose then? Vergere's own galactic sojourn before returning to the Vong during the first year of the NJO is mysterious still. Maybe they met there before Lomi and Welt were sent to the Worldship.

Lumiya and Vergere had in common that both trained by Palpatine (and Vader for Lumiya) they both defied Palpatine and went against him. Like Palpatine, Cronal and many others, they realised the Skywalker Dynasty had a specialty to it and was maybe required for their plans or else they'd go against the will of the Force and fail before even starting. Vergere considered Anakin and Jacen for grooming, letting fate decide which one would become her apprentice.
Interesting is also that Lomi and Welk were hired by the One Sith to escort Lumiya back to Korriban after her talks with the Vong but were captured by them and taken to Myrkr, as Lumiya obviously escaped the Vong. There is an untold story there, too! Seems Lumiya's talks with the Vong went bad, and they had to fight their way out. She made it, her "guardian Sith duo" didn't.
Or, as it is Vergere's modus operandi, she captured who she wants to speak with... like with Darth Krayt before, she took Lumiya along her guardians with the Vong capturing them for her. Lumiya she let go, the other two not.
So whatever Vergere talked to her about, the Vong seemed to afterward not like her or the Sith! Did Vergere try to make both Sith and Jedi into enemies of the Vong, or unite against the Vong? Or did she want to keep the Vong from capturing too many Jedi and Forceusers, like she alienated Darth Krayt and had him escape the Vong, too, after some torture talks.

Did Lumiya and Vergere talk about Jacen only? Hardly.. long before she made her choice, I think they talked about Anakin and him both. Hence also their interest in Tahiri, IF Anakin would be the one they got. Tenel Ka was too protected as Hapan heir, except for when she went Jedi with the strike team herself. But after the failure of Tahiri's shaping beforehand, they did not capture Tenel Ka along in SBS it seems, though after SBS during Dark Journey, the Vong made advances towards Hapes all of a sudden... and not just because Jaina and pals fled there I believe, eh?

So... from a certain point of view, one could say that Vergere and Lumiya overcame titles like Jedi, Sith, etc. and found a common ground in goals despite differences in means not settled yet. Both wanted the same positive future, saw who was needed to create it and enforced from their respective povs to achieve and influence such an outcome knowing the costs it would entail to manipulate and achieve this. (not much different from the Insiders club to forsake democracy and enforce their favourite future when taking on the election gambling in the NJO!)

Thus from a certain point of view, Jacen's vision of a Throne of Balance started with Vergere and Lumiya after all. And the silent agreement to jointly train him in all sides of the Force as one to spearhead not just a revolution within the Vong to overcome Onimi and correct Vergere's old mistake, but also to reform the Jedi with a new philosophy, as well as reform the Sith. The basis for a future joint Council even perhaps.

Pity only that both women's flaws would also shape him when Lumiya tried to in the process get revenge on Luke, as Vergere tried to correct her old mistake in the process of creating a future via Jacen. And in a way he defied both and became something else, his own. We know that while reasoning with Vergere in Dark Nest his philosophy differed from hers in several ways already, not just refined by Force cults he visited along the sojourn, but also by seeing Vergere in a new light in retrospective. (Or Denning just goofed that up lol but we need to deal with it now).
The revolution that Vergere needed against Onimi did not come from Jacen but Anakin. And via him and Tahiri, Vua Rapuung, Sekot, Nom Anor even who thrust in a role to survive, became that role and rather unintentionally created a revolution. Jacen just dealt the final blow to Onimi as Force Avatar.
And the revenge Lumiya craved was her own undoing and death, despite Mara dying first and her not needing to see her plan come to fruition beyond her death, what she wanted most, Luke, she never got and died with that thought.

In a way, it hit me now, as it will @Thrawn McEwok I am sure, that Anakin should have been both womens choice, as he probably was before his sacrificial suicide by amphistaff (and LFLs NJO concept swap from him to star Jacen instead). Jacen was just there gardening... slaying some, nurturing some (but gardening requires a choice. the gardener chooses what is weed and what is plant. By nature all would be plant, there are no weeds! Jacen though chose and slayed what he thought was the weed. Would Anakin have seen through this mindgame and riddle and that there are no weeds, just plants with a use and meaning to their existence, required for cosmic balance of ecosystems? Plants and Weeds is like the Force and Dark Side. There is no Dark Side... all is the Force, and if in balance, life/creation and death/destruction are a natural cycle, neither good or bad (Mortis!) which only become bad if one, either side. Thus Vergere contradicted herself with that analogue for Jacen!!!). Thus one might say by Betrayal Jacen realised the truth of the Gardener analogue and the different Vergere philosophy perpetuated during Dark Nest rather is the Gardener one, not her other one. She taught both to Jacen! Maybe so that he unites them or finds a middle ground by not realizing they are two different mindsets (one coming from Lumiya most likely and being the Sith principle put into less evil soundings analogues). Pity Jacen never was one for puzzles... unlike Anakin.
Anakin (and Tahiri) truly were the Dyad needed to make the Throne of Balance a reality. His spirit may have worked post mortem through all Mockanakin's and Tahiri, bridging life and death as a Dyad.

But given Jacen saw Allana on the throne of balance... he had a chance to bring it about as well at least. Any Solokid had it seems. Anakin and Tahiri were cut short regarding that, Jacen tried but may ultimately have failed or not, depending on discontinued Legends possibly going either way. But we know of one Solokid who might have achieved this if going ONLY by published material: Jaina! A dynasty, a throne held by an Emperor serving the Force, protected by Imperial Knights with the vow to prevent their Emperor going dark. Sounds rather Throne of Balance-ish if you ask me, even if a long shot from a new Jedha (Imperial Mission is though starting to make it a reality if Imp Intel's Moff would not have its claws into it) and the Galactic Federation triumvirate seems to complement the Imperial system in addition to the new Empress and her Imperial Knights round table. So it seems a Dyad was either partly successful, or bypassed so the Force required a new attempt at balance, not via a Chosen ONE, nor a DYAD but a TRIUMVIRATE.

All is as the Force wills it after all.

 

GABRI?! But, but... you never stoop to engage in the fanbro mud-fight in Lit. This thread just gets better and crazier...

I'm just QFT'ing this part because it's exactly the point, or several of them - I could have QFT'd the entire thing, really... the "survivor's guilt" part is interesting; it's not wrong (and let's remember, a certain redheaded senator who seized power in a military revolution had a policy of placing Moffs in front of firing squads, another reason the ones in Specter of the Past don't want to surrender); but Luke is also a survivor, and that perhaps makes the whole thing more subtle and more STAR WARS...

I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud...

Perfect!!

You get a Golden Ewok™ With Special Hyperspace Sauce for that!!

This too!!

Makes sense. Luke's personality and memory oscilates between versions, without him noticing...?!

I'm more worried that Thrawn has a clone of Corporal Hicks from ALIENS doing bodyguard duty in The Mandalorian...

But seriously, I'm pretty sure Shira and Mara are two different people - we do see them in the same place; but that doesn't mean that every Lumiya is necessarily Shira rather than Mara, and Daala could easily be Mara, or someone else impersonating her old cover identity...

This just gets better when we infer that Mara is actuallty Domina Tagge, and a Fallanassi "of the Circle"... do we ever see Mara's POV of her lack of memory of her origins, or is it just what she tells Luke? And even then, there's an out in the Alema Rar trick of method-acting your way around Jedi...

I'm not aware I lost track - where did you think I did?

But this seems like exactly the sort of point I've been making - we don't necessarily know our own motivations, and we definitely need to be wary of projecting onto others...

Um, no. I'm not sure why you keep trying to shift the focus on this subject - the nature of time-travel in Star Wars is not something I'm actually discussing with you, and it's completely irrelevant to the topic I am discussing, which is entirely about the validity and rationality of Tahiri's POV based on what she's seen told and shown by Jacen...

Discomfort and disagreement, then?

I don't think this is entirely right - Jacen's hesitancy is expressed through reference to Jedi teaching and Force-guidance, but I don't think it's really to do with what you call the "strange spiritual implications" at all (the YV are simply incomprehensible to the Jedi)... his position is much more to do with the fact the Force isn't showing him a clear solution, and with the fact that his preferred solution of Force-guided superiority in lightsaber combat isn't seeming to give him answers (and as I noted, all this is in large part an extension of his specific fight with Anakin)...

So Jacen hesitates because he doesn't know what to do; and being Jacen, he talks about this in Jedi terms - but I'd say his hesitation is actually more general than you think, both in terms of ideology, and in terms of options; I think you understate the extent he's impelled towards pacifism, and overstate the extent that he really supports fighting except as a tactical expression of the Force - at the core of that, there's a sort of zen not-knowing that's actually one of his most interesting, most Jedi traits...

Hang on. This is not what you've been arguing, this is what I've been saying...

True enough, and a very good point. But most people aren't impelled to adopt the model of Jedi heroism that Jacen's given, and which I'd argue makes his journey that much harder... that, as I've been saying, is where the problem for him is...

Au contraire, mon capitaine. The solution was always to dismantle Lumiya with a lightsaber. Not necessarily quite as decisively as he halved those gundarks he trained Nelani with, but certainly to end her threat the old-fashioned way, which can be done without much damage beyond what Luke already did - inded, the dismantling in this scenario would be the start of fixing...

shoulda spent more time on engine maintenance, huh, jasa?

According to the later Jedi, a faction of the original Order fell, but we only have their much later narrative of those events, and nothing to say which side any of the Red Sith from Tython ended up on; and under the Exiles and Kun, the caste system and experiments didn't stop the Red Sith thinking for themselves - I just pointed you to every prominent canon example of them actually speaking for themselves, which shows that they did indeed think differently and disagree.

Oh, I see what you're saying now. And honestly, I still think you're wrong. You can contrive specific, simplistic situations that illiustrate the idea you're trying to communicate, but I don't think it's as fundamental as you think (reality is always conditioned by context, which is usually much more complex), nor particularly useful (as I said, citing several examples, such crude effort is often painfully misdirected), and I place a lot of emphasis on understanding - knowing where to move, what's going on, intuitively navigating (something Jacen's actually very good at within the limited tactical frame of a fight or simply walking up a ramp, allied to his will, but also distorted and limited by it - I see his will as a tempered psychological construct rather than an ur-id sort of thing, interfering with his ability to read situations accurately and know what to do, limiting him to the lightsaber)...

So, ultimately, this is a debate about psychological morality?

(And, as an afterthought, there's some irony here - Jacen believes, as he says in VP, that skill with the lightsaber proves a Jedi's connection with the Force, but there's always too much of his own will in his actions - that horrible thought, the idea that he's polluted the Force with his ego, is what he's repeatedly steering himself away from, becuase his Jedi ideology doesn't know what to do with that)...

"Such a quiet thing, to fall"...

That, to me, seems like nothing more than self-deception. Jacen's focus on reign is itself a flaw of his perspective, and his idea that rule by his bloodline will "be good" is in itself a confession of his flaw and vulnerability, the fundamentally derailing self-image that he has...

Jacen is not the master-free-from-attachments he imagines. Isn't that obvious to you?

Oh, I know. Why does that concern me, though?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Someone not only realizing that Mara wasn't on the dark side at all but also recognizing that that was the whole point of her service to Palpatine and by his deliberate design - that's rare enough to be catnip to me. I couldn't resist

Oh, you know I have all sorts of thoughts on Luke and Mara's similarities and complementariness. We can have that discussion somewhere where it's not a derailment, though Let the Jacen debate continue; I'm just going to mosey on back to FanFic

 

The entire novel of Betrayal before Jacen meets Lumiya is that hard often unpleasant solutions are necessary to solve crises. The terrorist, the suicide jedi wannabe, the Corellian insurrection. This is brought up-killing Lumiya will produce extremely bad consequences. Jacen sees multiple futures and they all end in war or disaster if Lumiya dies or is arrested.

Do you even know what I’m arguing? I’m arguing Jacen’s primary raison d’etre, his
raison de vivre, is first and foremost the spiritual. You are trying to argue this interacts with his more simplistic and base desire to play the hero to create a set of psychological pathologies. I’m arguing that the latter is ultimately secondary, a grafted motive that is not core to who he really is. Sometimes yes people have contradicting motives or goals that simply…don’t interact. The human mind is capable of compartmentalization and Jacen’s hero impulse is compartmentalized, separate from his deeper drives and longings.

I am arguing that problem isn’t there. You’re presuming a connection between compartmentalized desires. That isn’t there. You are insisting Jacen’s differing motivations have to interact in some way or react like elements in a laboratory to produce what we call his psyche. I am arguing his mind can have them both, and they remain separate, like tools on opposite sides of a table.

Again, none of this would exist if not for the spiritual problem the Vong pose. Jacen fought the dark imperium fine. Jacen’s personal questions are brought on by this problem, the Vong are incomprehensible to the Jedi, and that means the force as you say isn’t giving clear answers or guidance. Weird how you are willing to connect concepts together or say there is no connection on what seem to me to be arbitrary grounds.

I’m not sure this follows. All life down to the Simplest follows basic drives to eat, reproduce, and survive. Whether or not this is chosen or simply done determines the difference between sapience and animal or even bacterial input derived instinct. As Vergere noted-pain is the driver of the universe. The pain of hunger or physical distress or even sheer boredom makes life move. Jacen learns to master pain, to love it, and thus to live within and through it. To love the universe requires conscious choice after all, and that hurts. To exercise one’s Will to Power means either simply ignoring pain, or going through the embrace and coming out the other side.

Perhaps this speaks to a political difference, but I’m not uncomfortable with the concept of “reigning” as you seem to be. After all, in Christianity Christ will reign in eternity forever. He is worthy by virtue of being God and rising from the dead of opening the scroll to bring about judgement, to conquer and to impose His (divine) Will on reality.

All rulers reign, in some form or another. Whether they are worthy of their crown and throne or not is a different question. But especially since SW has a very fairy tale derived narrative structure-someone reigning or having the right too or ability to reign because of blood is part of the genre. So I’m not really sure why this concept makes you uncomfortable.

Allana’s reign I see is more spiritual and messianic than strictly political. Still she has the right too reign, because destiny itself is calling her to sit on the White Throne and because of her special heritage.

Quibbling really.

The validity is entirely based on whether or not her goals are possible. If they are, then your 60 dimensional Chess is more plausible. Or at least can be imagined. I’m arguing Tahiri is broken. Her perspective is shrouded by her own delusions and clinging hopes, and outright lies. There is no real evidence in the text to counter this. Especially even in FOTJ, where if Tahiri had some hidden motivation or rational plan, it is never even hinted at.

I’m not thinking about this discussion every waking moment between replies. And I doubt you are either. You might remember details and certain sub points better than I do. In which case, I’ll retract that claim as an unreasonable generalization.

Because we’re disagreeing yet we retain a baseline of shared interest and (I hope) mutual respect?

 

In the end it didn't matter. A war happened resulting in multiple worlds affected and the galaxy dividing. A disaster would occur because of the rise of anti-Jedi sentimentality that allowed Abeloth and the Lost Tribe of the Sith to rise to prominence. Lumiya died. Jacen died. Pellaeon died. Omas died. Isolder died. Sal-Solo died (not that we care, he should've been executed after the Vong War anyway). Cakhmaim died. Meelwalh died. Corellian leadership in chaos. Niathal disgraced. Skywalkers and Solos disgraced. Mandalore left without their leader being allowed home. Imperials rise back to further prominence. Hapans angry. Commenorians angry. Coruscanti angry. Bothans angry.

Yeah. Jacen really should've just killed Lumiya that day and be done with it. But then we wouldn't be screaming how terrible the writing of the series was, even to this day. We wouldn't be cursing Troy Denning either. Nor would we wonder if Karen Traviss did get the last laugh in her mini-feud with Denning.

 

Yes - you are either currently watching Twin Peaks Season 3, or should be.

 

And then we wouldn’t have had a series. Maybe the war would be worse, maybe Luke would fall, maybe Allana would end up ruling the One Sith in a new empire one day. That’s the entire point of the scene and the book. Hard choices are made because there aren’t any rosy outcomes.

 

That's always seemed obvious to me - and I'd argue that a lot of the point about Palpatine is that he breaks the rules like that; I can see that might bother some people, but I suspect they realise instinctively when reading the novels, even if they don't want to admit it...

Oh, I don't know - the reason I'm here is more because I care about the Jedi and the SkySolos in general, and talking about the rest of them might make for an interesting discussion?

Which is a polite, subtle way of saying *Luke and Mara drop into a circle of hostile blasters, and get to work, with Mara thrusting the point of her lightsaber through several problems*...

There are other ways to disarm her beyond those options. And as I think I said already, Force-visions are unreliable guides that repeatedly impel inexperienced Jedi to act in haste. The essentially contrived scenarios that Lumiya constructs can be seen as bait for Jacen's ego; rather than existential questions of "right and wrong", they're tests of his ideological alignment or maybe just ways to secure confirmation of his gullibility. More generally, as @Noash_Retrac already said, there is absolutely no objective indication that Jacen's choices were sensible - in fact, if he sees the scenarios as binary moral teaching-aids rather than cynical, manipulative constructs, he's proving he can't see the big picture as clearly as he thinks.

What makes you so sure that they're as separate as you think?

We differ in our opinions, yes, but I'm not sure what you base yours on; I'm not "presuming" or imposing abstract theories, rather I infer from the specific evidence of Jacen's emotional responses, which show, repeatedly and consistently, that he isn't free from mundane connections... whether that's his struggles with the contradictions of the doctrinal Jedi stance in the early NJO, his denials and externalisations in Traitor and Destiny's Way, his emotional high in The Unifying Force, or his protectiveness of his daughter in the Caedus novels...

I say this as someone who actually has a lot of respect for "monastic" ideas of renouncing worldly paradigms - I just don't see that as what Jacen is really doing...

I have no quibble with the way you've phrased this, this time round - but what I'd emphasise is that this "spiritual problem" is entirely a problem of correct Jedi behaviour... I emphatically reject any inference that the Yuuzhan Vong might be, to quote you, "unnatural abominations or force damned or something along those lines"... and that rejection is no mere matter of opinion, but a firm and logical piece of epistemology!

The problem is not to do with the Yuuzhan Vong. The problem is that the Jedi do not understand them and do not know how to respond to them, and that is a problem entirely to do with the Jedi!!

Jacen, I think, actually understands that distinction reasonably well, at least until Destiny's Way...

I have no idea what you're referring to here...

Honest answer? I think you're fundamentally misphrasing the nature of reality - even animal life is not as innately predatory as your paradigm pretends (the panda with its bamboo or the whale getting huge on krill is calmly, existentially proving you wrong), and reproduction is not an aggressive imperative so much as a natural process. I could talk about how urban biospheres thrive on engine exhaust, or about rain, or Hopkins' windhover, but there is a particular pattern of light and energy that extends from cosmic background through photosynthesis and the instinctive creativity of hand and eye and back again to the Maxwell-Enistein equations; or, in Jedi terms, luminous beings are we, not this crude matter...

Incorrect, on all counts - I'm very confortable in what I'm saying, and have no particular problem with the concept of monarchy.

Again, it doesn't - why do you think it does?

Where I think we disagree is what defines the "ability" to rule effectively - it's not enough to simply bully people, which just causes disturbance ("the more you tighten your grip", et cetera); you have to make the right choices, the choices that accommodate people, and - the most important thing - know when not to do anything!

So what about your earlier statements...

...?

Is that just Jacen fooling himself?

And if it is; whither Jacen Solo?

I'm not sure what you're referring as "quibbling", but regardless, this seems like an attempt to downplay a real difference in our POVs here...

No, it's based on whether she thinks they are...

As I said already, this isn't the impractically complicated idea that you're trying to say it is...

Jacen has led Tahiri to believe that he's using new Force powers to change the timeline; she thus believes she has an opportunity to learn these powers herself, and create a better timeline - she might even believe she has a moral obligation to undo changes that he's made!

Yes, we as readers know he doesn't believe what he's telling her, but he's worked hard to sell the idea convincingly...

Seems pretty straightforward to me?

This is a perfect illustration of what I mean by the unreliability of narrative - the text only shows us what Jacen is thinking. To understand what Tahiri is thinking, you have to step away from his POV, and start by asking what she believes.

The fact that Jacen doesn't ask that question exposes the limits of his POV - he tells her something to extort specific actions from her, and doesn't ask what other motives and reactions she might acquire as a result...

If I realise I'm not sure of the topic, I check back through the messages - in the unlikely event that simple scrolling's not enough, the linkbacks in the quote-replies make it really easy...

Honestly, I don't think I'm actually interested in Jacen to the same extent you are.

I wasn't, but I'll take that as a huge complement...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

The Return of the Kierkegaardian Persona [?]

 

I am still not convinced that flowwalking does not work. It can be actual timetravel and changing the past. They tried to retcon it to limit its use, turn it into memorywalking merely, but its inception in Dark Nest proves it working 100% and that cannot be explained any other way.

Thus either Jacen teaches Tahiri actual flowwalking and knows he does, or he teaches her something else similiar seeming and pretends it is flowwalking to trick her.

But what if he was honest about it and the dangers, even if doubting it might work the way she wanted?

Did he see any future with Anakin Solo back among the living when futuresearching via visions-Force-google? (Yeah the Force's search alghorithm may be flawed or not show him all there is just like in real life... Lol does the Force have a Darknet?). Or did he see any future with Abeloth, Kemp clones, One Sith, White Eyes Palpatine? OneCanon ST? Legacy comics?

If so, how did/would he react to those? Take them into account? Discard why?

Given Jokes/Plans about Anakin in Lotf/Fotj, was Allana just a fill in for Anakin in the visions after they deemed going through with resurrection a nogo? Anakin on throne of Balance as a Dyad with Tahiri coming to pass?

Anakin as motivation would be interesting, less selfish than Allanas safety, and add a bittersweet angle to bring back a hero or die trying as a villain or both.
Imagine Sith Jacen going back to save Anakin and die in his place in SbS as his end!


If Jacen saw Abeloth in visionssearch and still destroyed Centerpoint... It only makes sense if he had a plan about releasing and stopping her. Like undoinh stuff via flowwalking and Anakin back from the dead pulling a lightsaber out of a tree on Kashyyyk... Presuming nobody burned THAT tree (oops, lol). Unless Centerpoint and the burning happened to cement Allanas future and specifically prevent Anakins return! Like with controling Tahiri to have all Anakin angles back to live covered in Allanas favor... Hmmm...

There is only one problem and tragedy to all this, Allana. His daugthers existence gives him doubt which future to chose. Her best, or the galaxys by saving Anakin? Can he selfsacrifice knowing Allana has no future with him?

Undoing Abeloth may be a quicker path to harmony but saving a future for Allana may in the longer run produce the same. Did he chose a lesser evil? Or dis he just move the inevitabke a bit farther?





Gesendet von meinem FP3 mit Tapatalk

 

You've returned and we can continue!

You're not giving the book enough credit honestly. Betrayal very much acknowledges visions can be unreliable and always in motion the future is. At the same time, choices and paths are not in fact unlimited, one choice can only produce so many outcomes. Killing Lumiya is treated as producing bad outcomes, regardless. Jacen doesn't see a single vision here, but sets of visions. If Lumiya dies, galaxy burns, if Lumiya is taken into custody she is killed in prison, galaxy burns. If you run a hundred simulations and 99 of them produce a certain result, your going to be confident in that its accurate. Force visions are unreliable, but they are also more reliable than what people say.

Jacen really doesn't want to be the hero by the time of Betrayal, the boy he was in the YJK is gone. He doesn't care for "cutting down the bad guy with the lightsaber" and before you say "well his ego" no, thinking the burden is all on you, that only you can hold up the sky, only you can make the difficult choices, so everyone else should be spared the impossible demand you've taken on your shoulders is not "heroism". As we are defining it here. Jacen does think he knows better, but not because he wants to stand triumphant over the corpse of the bad guy and kiss the girl, but because he believes with all his heart his destiny demands he be the one to kill the helpless, to do the unthinkable. Its easy to kill a giant, but its much harder to order a village burned.

He has a conversation with Tahiri about this very thing.

The peak of Jacen's life as we've already discussed was his force oneness. Imagine for the briefest of moments you were called up to Heaven itself and were told every secret hidden from the minds of men by God Himself, and you were entrusted with knowledge, peace and power beyond the dreams of angels. You would much like Jacen consider everything after in your life an inferior product, and you'd search for that experience again even if you knew you'd never get there.

No he isn't free of such connections but the fact he's willing to sacrifice all of them shows me the truly extent of his spiritual convictions.

You say this.

And then you follow with this. What do the Jedi owe the Vong, they don't understand them so something about how the Jedi see the force must be wrong or incomplete. Some set of assumptions they have must be re examined. If you don't understand a problem, then how you react to it is divorced from any prior paradigm. What if they are in fact "force damned"-maybe the force does just "reject" entire species, with the unpleasant moral implications that entails for the Jedi(thus tying into Alpha Red).

That's Vergere's entire point, the Vong aren't just abominations that should be destroyed, they are part of the force, and not some interloper abomination. What that means for the Jedi is how they see the force, as both moral guide and their own submission to it, and what exactly its "will" means.

I'd have to check the prior posts.

Uh, Thrawn? Animal life is defined by struggle and scarcity. Prey animals go where the grass is, predators follow. There are a multitude of animals that kill for a chance to reproduce, or kill in the act of reproducing. The inherent struggle, violence and pain is that "vital" spark of life, even if we use a materialistic approach of replication and food energy as its base. (Coincidentally that's what the dark side represents). Whales travel hundreds of miles seeking mates. Bison clash over mating rights. The only imperative in nature is Survive and Reproduce.

Alright I'll concede that.

Its not about ability. Allana Jacen believes is destined for rulership, her ability to reign is not in question(she's a Hapan princess and a powerful force user herself). Jacen is sacrificing a lot not for himself, but so that golden future where his daughter reigns over the galaxy in a presumably benovolent era of peace and goodwill.

What about them?

What she thinks is irrelevant. They aren't. She does get upset when Caedus explains that no Anakin can't be brought back. She may have believed it could be done, perhaps she thought that if Jacen won they might be able to "correct the timeline." But I don't see any such evidence she was thinking that way. Again we have her POV in FOTJ.

If this motive existed, explicitly in her head why did she never bring this up in internal monologues or at the trial?

But we're both interested in multiple month long internet debates.

 

Schroedinger's Ewok?!

@ColeFardreamer - we're on the same page about flow-walking; we only really know what Jacen thinks it does... and in contrast, we have Luke's sense that if the Yuuzhan Vomg remain in control of the reality-warping Force-nexus on the Jedi Templele/Imperial Palace site that Palpatine used to change everyone's perceptions of history, the past will be rewritten...

I'm curious - how do people read my tone in these replies?

No, I'm interpreting them very differently from you...

No. You could just be using bad input, or the methodology could be badly designed...

An opinion, not an objective truth. Your logic here seems a little circular to me - you need this posit to hold or your oponion becomes untenable, therefore you insist on its veracity...

So what? What he wants to be isn't the real issue, but it does imply the existence of a basic contradiction within him - the question is what he really is.

From the perspective of an unreconstructable Anakin/Tahiri fan like me, the first part of this sounds hillariously unconvincing...

The second part just sounds ludicrous, and also contains a rather un-Jedi narrative in which Jacen phrases everyone else either as little people who need his leadership, or monsters who exist only to be destroyed by him... and then he "destroys the village to save the village", which isn't actually some great heroic act of self-sacrifice, it's just a tantrum by someone whose sense of control is collapsing in the face of reality and doesn't know what he's doing...

No, that's simply his opinion and yours. Perhaps that's the problem...

Would I? To me, that sounds like something to respond to with song and celebration!

Jacen, poor Jacen... isn't doing that. You found a whole new way to problematize his experience!

If he was genuinely free of them, he wouldn't have any need to sacrifice them, still less feel an urge to do so - to me it's evidence he's in denial, trying to persuade himself of posits that he sees as ideologically necessary to maintain his self-image as a Jedi...

Yes, it's perfectly logical and consistent.

If the problem is that the Jedi don't understand a particular phenomenon, then that is a problem with the Jedi, not the phenomenon... to argue otherwise is an illogical externalisation that reflects an unwillingness to consider the uncomfortable implications for their own confidence in other matters...

We agree on this part - where we disagree is your contention that the theory you expressed above was ever a valid or position - or that Jacen ever even considered it...

We may also disagree on the correct Jedi response to the problem (I'm not convinced there's anything existentially "wrong" or needing fixed with the Yuuzhan Vong in the first place), but that's a bit off-topic...

Please do!

Do you actually believe that all life is structured into a strict hierarchy of "prey" and "predator"? That's why I mentioned pandas and whales. You can add in rhinos and elephants, or the humble porcupine and armadillo. Similarly, I don't think natural migration patterns or mating contests are actually as much about struggle as you seem to think, and I'd see these patterns, like most natural paterns as merely existential - you're imposing ideas of "imperatives" that are largely ideological constructs...

Predation is an interesting phenomenon, but like migration patterns, I'm fascinated by the grace of movement and instinctive precision involved, an intimation of something larger, not unlike the human "hand and eye" I mentioned in my previous reply - that's what I meant by "Hopkins' windhover", and what I suppose Vergere really meant by "the living Jedi dream"; she's seeing something bigger than her own philosophy!!

So, I'm curious - what led you to these completely wrong theories?

I'd say it very much is about ability, and if it's about ability, there's no need for "hard choices" in the first place; you just make better ones...

Also, with that in mind, is he really seeing a liberated Galaxy where the best choices are being made, or just a hypnotised one? Or, more broadly... an illusion?

You know what I'm asking. How do you square them with what you're now arguing?

What she thinks is entirely relevant - from the start of Inferno until the middle of Invincible, she believes that Jacen's new Force-powers enable him to change events and that's absolutely central to her motives - when she realises he just meant it as a cheap line, it's fairly clear she's appalled, but as to what she wanted to do with the ability, there's no guarantee Jacen is reading the precise details of her motivation right (and as I've already said, his failure to think through her motives very far in the first place shows he's an unreliable narrator here, with all that that implies); all we can really be sure of is the basic point that she sincerely believed he'd been changing the past and wanted to learn how to do it herself...

I understand that if you concede my point here the entire edifice of Jacen's self-image, and your interpretation of him, collapses... but that's sort of the whole point!

We never see her POV during the Caedus storyline, and afterwards she probably feels foolish and ashamed; as to the subsequent courtroom storyline, as I remarked at the time, her POV is constructed so we don't really know if her testimony is truth or not...

I think we have rather different reasons for participating, though!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

That's quite obvious...

That seems like something of a cope. Yes that could be the case but if your sure those things aren't a problem you only you have the results and the inner steel to face them or not.

If we're using IU force mechanics, then I'm right. Darth Plagueis has visions of things that come to pass, as does Mace Windu, thousands of years in the past, someone saw Darth Vader and Cade Skywalker(all tied to the Muur talisman). If we just mean narratively, force visions are often things that might come to be if certain choices are made or not made. Lumiya's early death making war inevitable is one of the latter.

He is Jacen Solo. He's the living Jedi dream, he's a dark lord of the Sith. He's a father, a war hero, a war criminal, a lover, a Jedi knight, a mystical sage, the colonel of the galactic alliance guard. He's Jacen Solo. All of those are simple reflections of the essence of the man within.

That could have some effect on your argument you know, that bias in favor of Anakin, just some small food for thought...

He's telling Tahiri he has the ability(and she must as well) be willing to do the hard thing. Killing a ninety year old man is not easy, its not glorious or rewarding or cathartic. It doesn't win you any accolades or make your insomnia any better. But sometimes it has to be done. That's the point, Jacen thinks he must be and is the only one who can't to paraphrase Vergere, "prune the weeds".

Utter spiritual transcendence. Humans throughout RL have shed megatons of blood, endured untold privation, punishment, sacrifice and pain, and given themselves to utter destruction simply on the word that they could achieve that. Nothing could compare. He actually reached it, he actually achieved Nirvana, saw God whatever you like-he "made it" what else in his life could compare?

Song and celebration but also sobriety that you'll never have that experience again(at least this side of the grave). I know if I were "called up" like John of Patmos, I would the rest of my life in such utter boredom and dissatisfaction I'd be tempted to suicide.

A sad and sober reaction I think would be the most appropriate...

I'm referring to his journey into and of the order of the sith lords. Jacen is willing to kill his parents and considers his family dead to him. That's the point, he's not "free" of them he's giving them up as sacrifice.

Please elaborate.

Hence Jacen's indecision and pacifist phase. You're separating the problems when they are in fact connected.

Its not valid, but the implication is present with the Vong's abscence. Either the force is in some sense limited and not universal, the Vong are genuinely outside of it, or the Force can in fact include them.

Its the issue of the Vong-Jedi-Forvce conundrum, which we're discussing now.

My argument is life is structured or rather expresses organically two imperatives that are fundamental. "Survive!" and "reproduce yourself!". Predator-prey dynamics are an expression of this. Nature has no purpose within itself except self perpetuation. That's true with everything, plants, animals, fungi and bacteria-though for the latter its simply a matter of self replication. Your distinction between a human ideological imposition and existential demands seems facile to me. Because you don't need to impose some sort human idea of cosmic darwinism of the "glorious eternal battle of life" to recognize simply that all living things are trying to do what I describe.

Tone tbh. I did not peg you as coming across as comfortable with monarchy.

And now here Caedus was, staring at the holodisplay but seeing a throne-a white throne in a brightly lit chamber. There was no one on it, but it was surrounded by a hundred beings regal enough to belong in the seat. They were beings of all species-Bothans and Hutts,, Ishi Tib and Mon Calamari, even humans and Squibs-and they all had the easy amicable bearing of old friends.

But what held Caedus there-what kept him staring at the vision with no regard for the screaming alarm sirens or the flimsiplast fluttering past the escaping air-was the tall, red headed woman at the center of the crowd. She had her mother's thin arching brows and full lipped mouth, but her nose was her grandmother's-small and not too long, with just a hint of a button at the end." Invincible

Jacen is seeing a peaceful galaxy where his daughter is presumably dwelling amongst her people in an age of peace, friendship and tranquility. Come to think of it, the vision has an almost heavenly quality to it, with the light and friendship being emphasized, rather than a structured palace or contentious court.

He's fighting for that. And to him that's worth the burning of worlds.

Jacen sees the above as an inarguable good, and while yes its his child, its not about ego or dynasty. You'll note there is no place of him in that vision.

Forgive me here, but what are you arguing? Let's restate the facts.
tic
1. Tahiri wants to bring back Anakin, either into the present or change the past.
2. Jacen is lying to her, he knows this is not possible. He wants Tahiri to eventually move past the hook he caught her with.
3. Tahiri is listless, desperate and lonely, falling under his influence. She is fundamentally a victim, regardless of what she wants.
Now where we disagree.

My argument, Tahiri is fundamentally a broken woman, with a general follower mentality she gravitates towards more charismatic personalities. Jacen is taking advantage of her, and she isn't plotting, planning or otherwise seeking out on her own under her own conscious agency how to effect the past. There is no evidence Tahiri is playing any game here, we don't see it in LOTF and she doesn't mention "I was really stringing Jacen along until I found out how to do time travel right" in FOTJ. Something she would have told the Jedi if not the court.

Your argument, Tahiri is not a broken woman, with a follower personality and a fundamentally gentle constitution. She is capable of acting and planning on her own, a woman of hardy grit and a much stronger and firmer sense of self than Jacen believes. She wants to change the past, bring back Anakin. Jacen sees a weak listless broken woman, and that's due to his arrogance and or Tahiri's skill at concealing her true motives.

I'm arguing she's a pawn, and Jacen wants her to eventually join him in being a consciously driven Sith. You are arguing Tahiri was never a pawn and she is either using Jacen to find out the right technique or at least, did not enter into this arrangement because she was broken and cruelly manipulated but because she confidently and curiously wanted to find out how to bring back Anakin, deceiving Jacen the entire time.

I'm asking you to present textual evidence for your position, any evidence. I realize you have a pro Tahiri bias, and you might recoil(or not) at my evaluation of her fortitude and disposition, but I back that up with a general evaluation of her character. What are you backing up your position with?

If you were right, then yes Jacen's entire self image(and his claim of competence) would absolutely deserve to be thrown overboard. But you're not.

With that logic, she could have had Jacen's baby and simply blocked out the memory. Do you have any textual evidence that Tahiri's memory is particularly unreliable or her words untrustworthy.

Do we?

 

Tahiri was broken by Anakin's death and the Riina Kwaad personality. In all honesty, she should've stayed on Zonama Sekot. That way she was away from everything. Then she wouldn't have done that...thing...to Ben Skywalker.