Legacy #33: Fight Another Day, part 2 (of 2)

You might be right Jello, but only if Del Rey ends up doing nothing with Jag Fel. Thats the only way the reveal doesn't effect the novels. But then I highly doubt that nothing will be done with Jag Fel.

And I still don't agree with your take on story telling. To me the start, the middle and the end are all equally important. There certainly can be a reason to make the journey even if the end is already known, I'd just rather be a teary eyed prepubescent than know the end before the beginning in this case.

I do wonder if I am talking with anyone here that doesn't read the spoilers before they read the product. Nothing wrong with that, to each there own, but I find it hard to believe that everyone is uninterested in surprises, twists and turns and other hyjinx.

One glance back at the thread from the Nyna Claxite reveal shows me a lot of very surprised and happy readers and the writer asking if the readers figured out the twist. That to me is what I'd like the goal to be. Legacy has been full of surprises right from the start and largely I think that is a good thing and has worked very well.

Mostly I think that everyone(both comics and novels) is viewing the Fel 1 issue as extremely minor, and no doubt it is in the grand scheme of the story. Just to me its not. This is bigger than Bantha being a Skywalker, bigger than Nyna being Morrigan, bigger than Wyyrlok maybe or maybe not killing Krayt.

This is about the element of the story that I enjoy the most, about the Imperial Remnant and how it becomes the Fel Empire. I would have preferred it in a non spoiler-esque fashion, with name dropping in Legacy not helping flesh out a story some 80 or 90 years before Legacy.

Yeah, I'm assuming that sometime during FOTJ that Jag will become Emperor, maybe I'll be wrong. I hope I am. But it does seem to make Jag untouchable even if he doesn't take the throne, because we now know that he has to live to take the throne.

Havac makes a good point, this isn't as big as Vader/Luke. But Cem wasn't even in my radar, I was thinking more along the lines that Jag's first born son takes the title, that way Jag would not even need be around. Making Jag Fel the first Emperor is anti-Climactic for me even if it cleared the air for most of you.

I think there was an interesting story to tell there, one we didn't know the ending to until now. Now the story can still be told, I'll still read it, but part of the end has been given away. I think its a fair critism, even if you all don't agree. I'm not trying to chnage anyones mind here, just share my own thoughts.

It's amazing but for all the positive things I have to say about Legacy none of them ever get quoted for discussion....

 

The reveal does not effect the novels - it may effect how you read them, but it doesn't effect the novels themselves.

You're right. What we're saying, though, is that it's a non-surprise, which was my earlier point with Sidious. Theres no reason to keep it secret, because it's sickeningly obvious at this point - it was kept secret earlier, before it was obvious, and even then it was something of an open secret, given the white streak...

We love them. When there's a surprise to be had. This bit about Emperor Jagged Fel has been evident since Legacy #0, and dead obvious since the end of Invincible.

Again, that was a surprise. This was not.

More important historically, yes, but again, we all knew it already.

We still don't know how it happens. But I have trouble believing that you didn't see all the evidence pointing towards Jag, with Invincible only confirming it.

The Imperial Mission was started by Jag. The Imperial Mission was said to have been started by the first Fel Emperor. Invincible cinched his identity, Rob.

I guess my biggest question is...if it wasn't revealed in the comic, would you actually have been surprised when you read the FotJ book, or would it have pretty much just been a confirmation of what you already speculated?

 

Invincible sinched Jag's identity as CoS of the Remnant, occupying Pellaeon's old position. Nothing more. There is no text that you can show me from Invincible that says otherwise.

Now had I read about Jag taking the throne on one page in FOTJ, like his promotion to CoS, I wouldn't be surprised. If it had its own book with the plot central to the story and some creative idea's it still could have been a surprise.

As to the Imperial Mission "After the Yuuzhan Vong War" seems pretty vague to me.

Really the whole thing is already retconned with Han coming up with the idea and an unnamed Moff supporting it. Jag just shuffled his feet and stood there quietly doing as he was told. How quickly the Mission gets rolling is even in question. I can't remember if anything about it was mentioned in Millennium Falcon, but I don't recall any mention of it.

I won't say that the evidence didn't point toward Jag, it does, but that doesn't mean there wasn't room for a twist. Maybe there still is. We'll see.

 

Robimus: So were you surprised when you saw that Legacy said Jag was the first Emperor? If not, I don't see the problem, but if so, why does it matter that you got the surprise there and not in the novels? All this talk of the comic "spoiling" the novels suggests that it was ever meant to be a surprise for the novels. Your Calixte and Vader analogies don't hold?those were surprises created as part of, and meant for the respective works they were revealed in. This is not a surprise created for the novels?both in the sense that it wasn't made for the novels, and in the sense that it's never been treated as a surprise, in either medium. It's the history of an institution created for the comics?so what's wrong with the comics revealing its history?

 

HoS, actually. Anyway, what happened here was that Legacy established a fact about the First Fel Emperor, and LotF gave it to Jag.

Exactly.

Which all has to do with plot and not with the fact of him being Emperor.

So again: you knew, like the rest of us, that it was going to be Jag. You were just hoping that, maybe, they would pull something out of their hat?

Try this one on, then, from Legacy #0:

The Mission began as part of the first Emperor Fel's "Victory Without War" initiative ...

So yeah.

 

Think of it this way, Rob: all it does is establish a fact. A very basic fact. It doesn't establish a story. And while I'll grant you that it does take away the possibility for a wild, wild twist, not only was that possibility not very strong, but it's also something that all of Legacy, or any story set after another story, does as a matter of course. Cade's dad being established as Kol in the comic prevents there being a wild twist in the novels where the Skywalker everyone assumes is going to be Cade's dad dies, and an illegitimate Skywalker winds up coming into the picture and whatever. Heck, Cade and Kol even existing prevents a wild twist where the Skywalker line dies in FOTJ and the Solos become the great leading Jedi line. The Empire still being around and having backstory prevents a wild twist where it completely dissolves, or conquers the entire galaxy again between LOTF and Legacy. Legacy establishing the existence of the GA prevented a wild twist in LOTF where the Confederation won the war and the GA was completely wiped out forever.

But at the same time, these kind of facts allow the opportunity for new twists. Now everyone will assume Jaina's as good as established as the IWOD, but the possibility that Jag goes and marries Tenel Ka is still hanging out there randomly. Maybe this will allow a shocking twist where Jag's son is actually the first real emperor, and Jag is posthumously elevated to the position by the Moff Council in honor of his great sacrifice at the Battle of Wiggida Wonk and everyone can shout "HOLY CRAP I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING!" Now we can have Ben have a son named Kol, and everyone knows it's Legacy Kol, but then he dies early, and Kol's younger brother has a son named Kol in his honor, and everyone can be shocked like crazy. Now we can have a shocking twist where the Empire we thought had a Victory Without War program briefly goes to war with the GA over anti-Jedi sentiments or whatever. Even in LOTF, we still could have had a really shocking twist where the GA did lose, and was only reconstituted twenty years later.

All it's doing is modifying the parameters of any twist, not eliminating the possibility of your ever being surprised.

 

I still don't see where your coming from with this Imperial Mission stuff Boba Matt. It's evidence, not solid fact. Just because Han suggested the idea and the Moff's backed it infront of him doesn't mean Jag ran out and made it happen, well at least prior to Legacy #33 it didn't. Now its obvious, before it wasn't fact, even if it was expected.

And I still don't think we officially know Jag's current title within the Remnant, I use CoS for simplification purposes. Again I look to the text, like I did with your claim that the throne was handed to Jag in Invincible . HoS isn't there, and neither is any mention of Emperor Fel.

Your taking evidence from before we knew Jag was to be Emperor and applying it in a way which ignores the text in Invincible. Look, I'm happy that your happy you were right, Jag is Fel 1, that doens't change the fact that the reveal was in Legacy #33, not Invincible.

 

Oh I see what's going on here.

You're shucking Ockham's Razor on purpose, in order to hold on to the dubious possibility of a twist in face of, well, the facts.

That's a different thing entirely - much like assuming, as some did, that Palpatine could possibly be a clone of Darth Sidious, rather than Sidious himself - and what it really comes down to is the question posed above: were you surprised at Fel I's identity, or surprised to see it confirmed? If the former, why and how? And if the latter - as your comments seem to suggest - then there was no surprise to be had.

It's in the excerpt from the new novel's audiobook.

No. As pointed at before: we've all known this was the most likely answer since Legacy #0, given the family name, the white streaks, and the Force sensitivity (which suggests a Jedi ancestor, and the Jag/Jaina relationship has been built up since the NJO). Again, removing doubt is not the same thing as spoiler. Telling us that they will not surprise us, here, is not the removal of surprise.

 

But why does it matter where the reveal was? If it's a surprise, it's a surprise no matter where it is. Maybe by making it a surprise in the comics it's not a surprise in the novels, but is there anything special about the novels that they need to get all the surprises?

 

The bigger issue, for me, is that if you weren't surprised by the identity of Fel I, but simply surprised that it was revealed here, then there wasn't any surprise at all.

Stated differently, if what you're really mad about is a confirmation and not a revelation, then "surprise," "suspense," and "spoiler" are not actually the correct English words for this conversation. What happened in Legacy was clearly a case of LFL agreeing that things had been made clear enough, so there was no point in skirting the issue, anymore. What they did was less like telling your friend that Bruce Willis, at the end of The Sixth Sense, is a ghost, than it is like telling your friend, "Hey...The Sixth Sense has a great surprise ending!"; it was less like telling your friend, who only knows ANH, that Vader is Luke's father, and more like saying, "Yes, Luke does become a Jedi and the Rebels do win."

The nature of your complaints - given that you admit that all signs pointed to Jag - are akin to going to see a movie and lamenting that it didn't have a surprise ending, that in a romantic comedy the two leads ended up together rather than some rascally third guy turning up fifty minutes in and stealing Jennifer Aniston from John Cusack or whatever. Surprise is nice, sometimes, but it's only surprise because it's usually not there.

And so, no, I don't think it's a spoiler for DR to confirm something no one was really confused about to begin with.

 

I would have liked the reveal to appear in the novels. Jag is a novel character who's story has been portrayed throuhgout in the novels since NJO. I've never said anything about the novels "needing all the surprises", but this does seem to me more like something that should have been revealed as part of Jag's story, not Roan's.


Boba Matt: Why my feelings about how this has played out is a big issue for you is beyond me right now. Sorry, but it really is. Your twisting logic in an effort to convince me that my opinion and feelings about this are invalid, because for you it was a natural, predictable step. To answer your question, yes I was surprised to see that Jag is Fel 1. Sure I suspected that Fel 1 could have been Jag, but it also could have been Jag Jr., Cem, even Soontir in a wild story telling twist.
I think I've been very clear about this.

As to your statement about ESB and ROTJ, that would have been a huge buzz killer for me back in the 1980's. At that time we didn't know the rebels would win, we did know that Lucas had stated on the record that he intended to do episodes 7,8 and 9. So why would that information not matter? Your looking back on this in a much different way than I do. Your trying to say this type of thing(Vaders reveal to Luke) is a "spoiler" and that other type(The rebels winning and Luke becoming a Jedi) isn't. That simply not true. They are both "spoilers".

This is still a "spoiler" no matter how much you want to change the definiton of what a "spoiler" is. It's an LFL approved spoiler for sure, but still a spoiler none the less. What can be discussed is how big of a "spoiler" it is, buts its a "spoiler" none the less.

None the less I'm interested in the HoS thing, didn't realize we had a source stating that. Maybe in the future you could just mention the source of your statement instead of playing the "I know something that you don't" card.

You need not respect or agree with my opinion about this but do understand that your not going to change it. The Legacy #33 Thread is now a Robimus free board.

 

Not invalid. I think you're angry about something other than what you're saying you're angry about.

It's a formulaic scifi hero story. You honestly thought there was a chance in hell the Rebels weren't going to win? Really? Really?

In addition to what I said earlier, it can't be a spoiler if the people holding the keys to the franchise said it's okay. By definition. The beginning of Citizen Kane is not a spoiler about him dying.

I just assumed you kept up on this stuff, and misspoke. That's why, when you called it into question, I clarified.

 

Might I suggest that if Rob felt the pronouncement was a spoiler then, for him, it was. For the rest of you, it wasn't. I put it in because I felt it was necessary, appropriate, and it was time. I'm sorry if it takes away from Rob's or anyone else's enjoyment of the issue but I'm not sorry I did it.

We don't have to all agree. I also don't think anyone is going to change their minds at this point.

Peace, good sentients.

John

 

Regardless of our perspective on this particular reveal, I think we can all agree that John and Jan are very crafty. Very good at the "gun on the mantlepiece in Act One so it's there for Act Three" kind of setup, for example.

So if it was time for the reveal within Legacy, then there must be some storytelling reason internal to Legacy which makes the revelation necessary to Legacy's storyline. Otherwise John would be happy to wait; for example, we're 33 issues into Legacy so far (nearly three years!) and we still know literally nothing about Marasiah's mother. Not when she died (or if she died - did she divorce Roan because he has a thing for blonde lightsaber training partners? ), not what her title was, not whether she was an IK too (like Roan), not even her name. Obviously John and Jan don't view this information as relevant, much less necessary, to the story they've told so far.

So what could be upcoming in the story which needs the reveal of Jag as Fel I? Something in the #37-40 arc perhaps?

It's not even a teaser, really, but thanks for stoking the fires, John!

 

Cade meets family on Tatooine...

Also, thanks Jello.