Why is Jaina, the most unpopular of the Solo kids, the one who's still alive?

You say that constantly, but Jaina never says a peep about it. Leia hears Gavin is looking for pilots, asks if Jaina is on the list, and he says no, because she's young and he wouldn't want to risk Leia's daughter. Leia says that his reasoning is no good, and he should put her on the list. He does. The choice to put her on the roster, from being on the list of candidates, is Gavin's, and regardless of to what extent Leia influenced that, it was utterly without input from Jaina.

 

Somebody doesn't like Jaina? I think I like her the best of the three Solo kids.

 

Lots and lots going on in here and lots to say.

First, there are people who like Jaina who buy and read books....who wouldn't post here in Lit if you paid them.

Second, Jaina has not yet had her own character arc. She was a supporting player in both her brothers' and shunted to the side to leave room for Ben's, but her own is still coming. At the same time, she is (or presumed to be) a significant part of 3 of the EU's most controversial storylines--the entire DN trilogy, the death of a Sith in Invincible and the formation of the IKs and the rise of the Fel Empire. Fans have very strong opinions about these particular storylines, and Jaina gets tarred with the bad feelings about all of them, deserved or not.

Third, for all the discussion of strong women in SW, a vocal group of readers want women they can stick in boxes. The 2 biggest female heroes in the post ROTJ-EU are a diplomat and an asassin turned good. Leia got more and much more vehement criticism for being a working mother than Mara did for killing people for Palpatine. So evidently, it's ok to be an assassin as long as you can get the job done while the kids are at school. Jaina doesn't fit in any particular box so she is either an "immature teenager" or she's a [TOS violation.]

 

Perhaps it is because she is the least favorite, and thus her death would have the least emotional impact?

Anyway, I like her...but then again, I haven't read of the novels recently, so I guess I don't get much of personality other than a nice collection of traits and accomplishments.

 

Yeah, Dark Nest really lowered my appreciation level of Jaina. I enjoyed her characterization through the NJO, but after that nothing really worked (there was a slight return to her previous roles in Betrayal and Bloodlines, but that was quickly forgone).

 

I don't even know why this would happen. They really don't come in contact that much, and when they did Jag was always suspicious of her, IIRC.

This is funny, because reasons 2) and 3) are why I dislike Jacen so much.

She's the sword of the jedi! And the kriffing granddaughter of Vader! Of course she needs to be a jedi.

I honestly did not like her in DN very much, but when she came back in Betrayal she seemed normal again, so it hasn't bothered me too much.

 

She didn't become unpopular by being weak-willed and easy to kill...

 

Who says she's unpopular?

I glommed on to her first, and I've been a YJK fan as long as they've been out.

To each their own, man, although I will say that she's had way more than her fair share of multiple writer disorder.

It isn't easy being a fan of hers, but I feel like she isn't a hero like everyone else and is complex in a way that most characters aren't. I mean, her closest parallel is freakin' Mara, who everyone knows is Zahn's Mary Sue (don't get me wrong, I do like her, but seriously).

In a moment of fan spite, I might even add that people LURVE jacen when he was whiny and annoying even before he went "bad".

It's subjective, though I see the point. I just wish she was written better and had more of an arc; perhaps we'll see more of her in the next books. That would be nice.

 

I'd contest that Jaina is the least popular. I think the thing is that she's the least talked-about. So that makes it easy to think people don't like her, but ultimately it just means she's the least controversial.

Anakin, ultimately, was the big hero and probably the most popular Solo kid by a mile. He died early, and people still haven't gotten over it eight years on, and it's something that still gets discussed a lot with his popularity frozen in time by his death. Jacen is someone that quite a few people love, in one form or another, but he's also someone that quite a few people loathe. He's probably the most unpopular in the sense that he has a reasonably large number of people vehemently disliking him. But like or dislike, the decisions made about him have been incredibly controversial, and he draws a lot of discussion and argumentation and mourning over what could have been. I can certainly see how that would make him seem more popular than Jaina, who had her controversy heyday in DN but has generally been the most under-the-radar of the Solo kids.

But that doesn't mean people dislike her; it just means that she's not doing a lot that grabs discussion forum headlines. She's got a passionate fanbase herself, though you may not see them as much (they've had all too little to comment on in LOTF, really). The fact that she's not inspired rampant outbursts of enthusiastic fan discussion is as much because she's the one who's still alive as anything else.

And I say this as a guy who doesn't consider himself a big Jaina fan. I haven't really found her compelling since she left the cockpit after the NJO, where she had the most unique role as a Jedi and was fitted into one of my favorite niches in the universe, that of the combat pilots. Since then, I've found that I vaguely like her and think she has potential when Allston writes her, and I don't really care for her as written by Traviss or Denning). But even I don't think she's unpopular, not at all.

 

I don't think Jaina's a bad character, I do love her. But there are a few reasons why some people had a hard time connecting to the character :
- Even tough she was a cool character (pilot, jedi and all...) she never really had a big role during the NJO exept for the 3 books were both her brother were supposed to be dead. She never really had a real story arc of her own, well there was dark journey, but it was short and not very a positive experience for her.
- During Dark Nest they completly destroyed her character. She became weird and didn't really make sense anymore. And even after the end of the whole crisis, the fact that Zekk and Jaina were always stuck with each other did disminish both characters, espacially with the boring romantical ambiguity. I guess that's also a reason why Zekk is very unpopular.
- She was almost absent of the first half of LOTF, it didn't help her character get importance. Plus I think the love triangle with jag and zekk bored most readers.
- Her temper is quite a difficult one, so I understand some people might find her boring.

I think tough, that her character has been getting more light and more positive treatement during the end of LOTF, and I truly hope it's the direction they're heading toward for her. But I am worried tough, as I didn't see her name mentioned in any of the blurbs for the 3 first books of FOTJ :/ I can't wait to see how they will connect with the Legacy comics about the whole Fel line thing. I do hope the IWoD theory is right, but I hope they have surprises for us.

 

she will end up with Kyp. no worries

 

I will admit Jaina dose have a bland story line but I enjoy reading more of her story line than I do of Jacen. After the whole Legacy of the Force turning sith thing I started not to like him and focused more on Jaina's story. Mind you the whole boyfriend situation is driving me nuts. I don't know how anyone can follow that. But all in all i think Jaina is a wonderful character to have in the series.

 

No baiting, please...

As for your examples, all of those characters appear on the list. Jaina Solo does not. There are certainly anomalies, and Jaina's absense could be one of them. It is, however, what Star Wars fans are looking up on the databank, which is scientific, as far as we know? not "ludicrous."

Also, last year the EUC (not Lit...)had a vote on who the Top 100 EU characters are. Jaina Solo came in at #23, Jacen at #4, and Anakin Solo was crowned the #1 EU character of all

 

Just a question: How many people did vote?

 

Soooo simple. When people wanted to check the Anakin Skywalker page, they confused the two.

 

Well, that was interesting to read. Wish I had been around to participate in that vote.

As for the searching on the data bank and everything, I'm going to stick with the gender argument. I'm not being mean or anything, but usually when you read books or watch tv, movies, etc your favorite character tends to be the one that you identify with the most. So, usually you're going to like the character that is the same gender as you, because you can identify with them even more. I think it is common knowledge that there are way more avid male SW fans than female. So when it comes down to numbers of the most "favorite" or most searched for of course a male character was going to come up as number one. (I was surprised reading that thread from above that a couple people thought Mara would top the list. )

Now, saying all this, I know that it's not always true, and that some guys' favorite character is a girl, girls' favorite is a guy, I know. I have said before that my favorite character overall is Obi. He is a guy. But that still doesn't kill my argument because my favorite EU character, my favorite character to read about, is Jaina, and I would have put her at the top of the list.

Also I would like to point out that Anakin's and Jacen's deaths catapult them into more popularity. A lot of people have said it before, so I am agreeing with them: These characters are more controversial, AND their stories are over. The full judgment of the character can be made because you know there wont be any new material coming out to change your mind (not counting the comics, which I am assuming that they will keep continuity with the characters). Jaina still has a lot to be said about her coming out, so maybe people just want to wait to see what else she's going to do before ranking her amoung their favorites.

I would agree with the statement that Anakin is, overall, the most popular out of the three. I just don't think that Jacen is really heads and feet, if at all, more popular than Jaina.

 

wth does baiting means???

 

I was thinking about this, and I wanted to refine my argument. But to do that, I guess I would like to know: what does the question in the title specifically ask?

If the question is regarding that more people like the other two Solo kids better, then I would have to agree and use the argument that I posted earlier today as the reasoning why.

BUT if the question is technically wondering about the assumption that more people dislike Jaina then I would have to completely disagree with that. If you asked everyone who said anakin was their favorite character, or perhaps jacen, if they disliked Jaina, I bet most of them would say no: they don't dislike her.

So basically I want to know if we're talking about the Solo boys' popularity, or Jaina's supposed unpopularity. From the question you might think that we're just asking about her not being popular, but the inclusion of the other solo kids in the thread title makes this more convoluted.

 

I have to say that I was always something of a Jaina fan. I liked her well enough in the YJK era (subsequently, I never got into Anakin that much until Greg Keyes started writing him in the Edge of Victory duology). Jacen didn't grab my attention until he appeared in NJO with a philosophical bent, though I was miffed that he wasn't as outgoing and heroic as Jaina (Traitor, then, was like a breath of fresh air for me). If nothing else, Jaina seemed to be the balance between her brothers, as she started to come out as in the early NJO.

Unfortunately, I think the problem has always been that the Solo kids overall have been constantly delegated to the role of, well, teenagers. Not that I don't appreciate the Big Three or any of the older EU characters, but it's hard for the kids to shine when they know that Mom or Dad or Uncle Luke can always swoop in and save the day (again, this was another reason why Traitor stood out for me). Consequently, I started appreciating Jaina's character during the Enemy Lines duology, when she was free of both her parents and siblings. But I think, overall, she has been kept to the side in favor of other male characters that are believed to be better suited as the lead.

 

She may not be popular here because she isn't that controversial, but she definitely has a very strong fan base. My least favorite of the Solo Kids is Jacen Solo. He bored me to tears.

I think Jaina is the strongest of all the Solo kids emotionally, and she works harder than them. Jacen just got everything and that went to his head, Jaina had to work for it.

And well, Anakin Solo is awesome. But this is besides the point. You may think she is the least popular Solo kid, but from what I've seen on the boards, she's definitely popular. She is real, and she is admired by a lot of fans. I think saying she is unpopular is a bit odd, since when you look on a lot of other boards, she has a major fan base.

 

I used to like jaina a lot. But I now resent her because she is alive and her brothers are not. Nothing against her, it's just that i preferred the others or I at least preferred the three siblings together.

 

I have to agree about the gender argument : People tend to prefer the character they identify the most to, and since there's more male SW fans it's legitimate that male characters have a better chance to be favorites. Well it didn't stop Mara Jade from being named most popular EU character, and I think Aala Secura is pretty popular too, but I guess the sexy aspect of both characters tend to attract male fans to them. Jaina's depiction are beautifull but after all she's not supposed to be a sexy character, she's the Tomboy of the series.

Well I was wondering, is there a single person who liked Jaina during Dark Nest ? I don't know what Troy Denning was thinking but he just did her no good.

 

NO! I hated her in DN. I think that was the point though, to be able to see the effect that the hive mind had on (usually) strong willed people. It made Unu and the Dark Nest seem that much scarier.

 

As I recall, Denning noted in an interview that he thought Jaina was quite strong in that series. He was disappointed that people missed this and noted it might have been too subtle to get his point across.

I'm not really crazy about the DN storyline. It didn't do anything to endear Jaina to the readers, but she stood by her beliefs in that story arc despite everything it cost her. I think that showed her strength of will.

 

that pretty much sums up my opinion..and I'm a twin too! I would NEVER in my life do such a thing even if my twin went over to the dark side..I would called upon some old school Jedi Magic and "Ulic'ed" him (blocked off his knowledge to the force).. maybe cut off an arm but what she did was MAN SLAUGHTER!! it made Anakin's execution of Dooku look petty as swatting a fly!

Shadojoker