Lit The Official Fate of the Jedi: Ascension Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

It would seem that reality has caught up with you:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/story/2011-10-11/darth-maul-returns/50736578/1

 

So it starts with over fifty pages of Sith welcoming Abeloth to Kesh. This seems both slightly excessive and grossly ignorant of the existence of cross-cutting.

 

OH GOD NOT THE SQUIBS.

 

Everyone is HILARIOUSLY casual about Vestara killing her dad. "Oh, gee, that's too bad. So, who wants to go back to Coruscant?" "Ooh, Coruscant, that'll be nice. I miss Coruscant."

EDIT: So, the famous domestic violence sequence. It's problematic, but I wouldn't actually characterize it as a scene of domestic abuse. Ben and Vestara, equally powerful Force-users from opposite sides of a war who don't trust each other, get into an argument because Ben thinks she's betrayed them, he tries to get hold of evidence and question her, she lashes out at him first with a Force strike, and he responds with a less-powerful Force strike to . . . what? Show anger? Warn her off? It's not clear, but it's in a Jedi-Sith context as much as a personal one and I don't think anyone would see anything untoward in it if it had been Jaina or Luke in that scene instead of Ben. I wouldn't use the scene to characterize Ben as having been abusive.

The problem is what's beyond the narrow context of what actually happens in the scene. It's the fact that the scene is clearly written to draw on images of domestic violence. Ben is super-angry and suspicious for no particular reason other than to get us a scene of how angry Ben is and how ashamed Vestara feels. His anger is emphasized. It's staged in the particularly domestic setting of a bedroom. His Force blow is characterized particularly as a slap. And it's clearly written to conjure these images of domestic violence to heighten the intensity of the following romantic catharsis. It treats domestic violence as emotional porn. The actual consequences of domestic violence aren't treated with seriousness; the specter of domestic violence, an angry, suspicious man slapping a woman, her feelings of violation, are played up as just powerful emotion and a necessary heightening prelude to sexy, intimate, profound romantic bonding over their shared emotional letdown. It could have just been a verbal fight, but by bringing actual violence into it and playing the emotions and imagery of the scene so evocatively of domestic violence, there's a very screwed-up message in here that plays into the he-just-loves-me-so-much distorted romantic justifications for abuse and fails to treat the issue with anything like the seriousness it deserves.

 

Oh, so we're giving up on the concept of figuring out the cause of Jacen's fall and deciding that it was "inevitable" after he learned from Vergere.

****. You.

EDIT: Oh, and it was okay to kill Kenth because he wanted to die anyway and nothing Saba ever did, none of her awful, disastrous decisions, were even slightly wrong and she's perfect and all the other Masters who acted like ***holes were perfect and everyone should feel great about themselves for being war-mad children who deposed the Grand Master because they felt pissy, started a war with the government, killed the deposed Grand Master, and took over the galaxy, because there is absolutely no room for reflection here.

****. You. ****. You. ****. You.

EDIT 2: Oh, he ****ing COMMENDS the Jedi for their actions. "Way to go, guys! You couldn't solve an internal dispute without killing each other and you couldn't solve a dispute with the government without staging a coup, I'm so ****ing proud of you!" FOR ****'S SAKE. FOR ****'S ****ING SAKE.

EDIT 3: Oh, so Luke's right back in Jedi Dictator mode. "I made a decision! Get your asses in line!" Ugh. Oh, and Luke, maybe the Jedi wouldn't be so vulnerable on Coruscant if they wren't ALL SITTING ON THEIR ASSES INSIDE THE TEMPLE ALL DAY EVERY DAY INSTEAD OF EVER DOING ANYTHING ELSE, SUCH AS AN ACTUAL THING. PLEASE TELL TROY DENNING AND CHRISTIE GOLDEN ABOUT THIS RADICAL INSIGHT.

 

There seams to be something wrong with your post it has changed all your kriffs, fraks and smegs to ****, or am I the only one who se it?

 

As Luke watches a hologram of Leia: "Luke ached for her."



EDIT: Luke, your fiendishly clever plan makes no goddamn sense at all and is awful. "All along I planned to let the Sith take control of the galaxy, so that I could leave them there in control of Leia and then go chasing after Abeloth and maybe kill her possibly for good and then come back and hopefully kill some of the Sith I never could have lured out any other way because I figured out on the basis of no evidence that obviously the Sith who didn't know what the hell a goddamn spaceship was two years ago have in the past year or so infiltrated all levels of the galaxy including the goddamn Senate despite that making the least sense of anything ever."

 

This has been amusing.

 

Ugh. I made a thread, way back in the day, about what I've always perceived to be an odd, almost anti-intellectual posture running throughout Star Wars, and this was exhibit A. The idea that a person is morally doomed from simply acquiring knowledge is downright insane. It's like telling me I'm destined to become a serial killer if I read a book about Ted Bundy. Glorifying ignorance and narrow-mindedness is an absolutely ass-backwards way to go through life, even in a fictional setting. And it doesn't even fit the fictional setting; the entire damn film saga relies on the viewer believing that Anakin can be redeemed, even though he learned from the most evil man in the galaxy.

But don't mind me, I'm probably just too evil to see the dangers of attempting to learn about anything that doesn't fit one very specific outlook.

 

Havac, note when you get exposition on Abeloth how it doesn't influence the action of the plot at all and serves no purpose except to allow Denning to enforce his "vision" on another writer's work again. Vergere was a Sith, after all.

 

This book is one of the only Adult novels that I haven't finished......
It's on my To-Do list.