Star Wars

The disappointing thing to me is that the end of the NJO actually felt like a nice setup for Jacen and Jaina as the future of the Jedi Order. Then in The Dark Nest Trilogy they take the idea of "there is no dark side compulsion, rather the innate darkness in all of us trying to take over" and corrupting it into "Mara Jade cackles while shooting Force lightning out of her fingertips."

Jacen shouldn't have fallen to the dark side to begin with, but the way it happened was exceedingly clunky, and unconvincing. The fact that the Jedi Council decided that he deserved to die without a discussion goes counter to what the entire saga stands for. The darkest of us can come back to the light. That is what Star Wars' overall theme was (to me, at least), and Troy Denning's postmodern idea of Star Wars totally missed that.

on edit: Darth Vader wiped out the Jedi, assisted with the establishment of an oppressive dictatorship, blew up fucking Alderaan, and Luke wouldn't draw his blade on him. Luke would let the Emperor Force lightning him to death before he drew his blade on Darth Vader. Jaina was told not even to speak to her twin brother, just to kill him.

edited 21st May '15 5:26:25 PM by sarcastibot

I think it was more of a thing to stop him from going the way of Vader. He was already proving that he would do pretty much anything. They just stopped it before it got too far.

And in light of Jacen's apparent Character Derailment that's what happens when you have so many other writers. Characterization gets knocked out of whack as each author has their own interpretations of characters and scenes.

Yeah, they should not have had so many authors working on a single arc at all, and if they were going to fuck up like that anyway, the publishers should have set serious boundaries to make it work. "This is how the characters work. No, you may NOT remake them into what you merely THINK they should be, this is who they fucking are, deal with it or we'll make you write My Little Pony fanfiction until your eyes bleed."

In other words, the good side of Executive Meddling.

I agree with other people's comments here: having multiple writers work on the same story with no clear standards for consistent plotting and characterization is a recipe for disaster. It leads to some storylines running into dead ends (especially in New Jedi Order with Anakin Solo's storyline from Edge of Victory: Conquest, which was the best element of the whole NJO), characters being completely different from book to book, and even the basic philosophies and behaviours of each side changing radically depending on who's writing. And the existence of tighter continuity than in the pre-NJO books means you can't just ignore or re-interpret any one-off books you don't like.

One of the comparisons that comes to mind is the widely panned Civil War event in Marvel Comics, which was similarly plagued by the outlook and characterization of the two sides, and even basic facts about the context, changing from one issue to another. It's impossible to write a strong, cohesive story in those conditions; you need all the writers and editors to be on the same page.

The grimdarkness was definitely another key problem with the NJO and everything following it. This is Star Wars, not Warhammer 40K. Anyone who can't remember that shouldn't be anywhere near it, as writer, editor, or anything else.

The fact that virtually everything after NJO was terribly written from a stylistic perspective (in addition to poor plotting and treating the characters like idiots) just made everything worse. While I didn't like the NJO books, there were at least a few of them that had fairly strong writing (notably, Conquest and Rebirth and Dark Journey, and to a slightly lesser degree Allston's Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand). Lesser degree because Allston is good at writing pilots, but very poor at writing Jedi. Conquest was the best of the Vong books, and if that plot arc had really been developed as it should have, I would have been fairly reconciled to Vong storyline.

edited 28th May '15 11:07:20 PM by Galadriel

To be fair, the two rebels books gave us Operation Emperors Hammer and Operation Emperors Spear.

I am willing to forgive them any faults for that

Also, Janson accidentially hitting on Jaina Solo. That was funny too.

edited 29th May '15 4:20:43 AM by 3of4

Anyone pick up Star Wars Aftermath? Got it from Amazon as part of Force Friday and am currently reading through it.

No, I haven't, though someone posted a general summary on the other Star Wars thread in the Film subforum.

Anyway, I read the first NJO book over the summer. Thought it was pretty good, I definitely like how the Vong flip the board over on warfare in the very first book.

I'm liking it so far. Sinjir is my favorite.

A Youtuber I follow on Twitter says that it's "Okay-ish" but he's at a con right now and said he'll give a more detailed review when he gets back.

Well, Aftermath is out and it has two and a half stars on Amazon. From what I hear, this is because it has been spammed with one and two star "reviews" of Star Wars fans protesting the new EU and wanting Legends to be canon again. Not sure if this is true but if it is... *facepalm*

http://www.amazon.com/Aftermath-Star-Journey-Force-Awakens/product-reviews/034551162X/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_btm?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

See for yourself. The opposition seems pretty solid to me, with the only positive review I read so far being a likely shill.

ETA: And saw a bunch more positive reviews. Maybe worth a look, maybe not. Not for me yet, because I almost never get books while they're new anymore.

Further ETA: And another switch in opinion. The high star ones bemoan the "haters" as wanting Legends back, but most of those negative reviews attack the writer's style. They don't even mention the Legends verse at all. I haven't read any of his books but the consistency in the reviews makes me think Wendig is as bad to detractors as Karen Traviss. And that's saying something.

edited 8th Sep '15 9:28:40 PM by Journeyman

I believe there were a few high-profile cases of Legends supporters criticizing the book, but as someone who has read it, I can definitely understand why someone wouldn't like it having read it myself. I enjoyed it overall, but I do feel like it was sold as the definitive post-Rot J novel but didn't really delver on that front.

In fact most of the criticism of the book I've seen have come from people who were legitimately looking forward to the book only for it to fall well short of expectations.

If anyone is looking for a Road to the Force Awakens novel that has received much more consistent praise, I'd recommend Lost Stars. While it mostly takes place during the events of the OT (and almost a quarter of the book takes place before A New Hope), it keeps going past the destruction of the Second Death Star for another year. And while only a small fraction of the book takes place after Rot J, you still get a good feel for the general state of the Galaxy during that time period.

Apparently Lost Stars is way better, though.

How much of those complaints had a realistic basis? Like, does the fact that a character is gay have an impact on the actual story, or is it some throwaway thing just in there to show diversity? And what about word choice? I saw something purporting to be a line from the book where a Tie Fighter "wibbled and wobbled" after being hit.

Having read both Lost Stars and Aftermath, I'll definitely agree that Lost Stars is the better written of the two.

I really liked how Neither Ciena nor Thane were true believers in the side they ended up on. Thane was simply disgusted enough with the Empire to plant his flag with a bunch of (in his eyes) overly idealistic fools. While Ciena became completely disillusioned with the Empire but couldn't bring herself to break her oath to it as she was raised in a culture that valued loyalty well past the point of Honor Before Reason.

The fact that the character in question is gay doesn't have an impact on the story beyond killing a potential romance. But I didn't have an issue with that any more then stating the hair color of a character whose hair color has no meaningful impact on the story. It's a descriptive trait, nothing less and nothing more and gay people aren't so rare that their existence in a story demands justification.

My main complaint with Aftermath, and why I consider Lost Stars to be a superior book, is that it was sold as the definitive post-Rot J novel, but barely featured any characters from the OT and ultimately dealt with an event of little importance in the grand scheme of things. The big Imperial meeting turned out to be a setup by the largest Imperial faction as a way to eliminate what was left of the competition.

It's very telling that Lost Stars was able to establish the general state of the Galaxy post-Rot J in just the last 10% of the book, and without even mentioning the imperial meeting in Aftermath.

edited 24th Sep '15 5:19:35 PM by Falrinn

Did Aftermath also actually refer to some mundane items as Space X like the Trope page for the book claims under Narm?

I generally don't pick up on stuff like that when I'm reading, but I have the digital copy so I just looked up every instance of the word "space" in the entire book.

The only particularly egregious example of this is two references to "space diapers" which are both part of the same dialogue sequence. So while the Narm entry on Aftermath's YMMV doesn't say anything factually incorrect, it's not like Chuck Wendig declared every random object a "space object".

edited 24th Sep '15 6:04:17 PM by Falrinn

Pretty much how I see it. I didn't hate NJO the way some fans did, and didn't get hung up on how Vong technology (for lack of a better term) seemed out of place in the Star Wars universe. It was a very depressing series for a while, but eventually things started to get better and the good guys won in the end. Even though the war took a horrible toll, that still counts as a happy ending for me.

What was more important to me was that the Solo kids had all grown up, if not necessarily to adulthood then close enough to Luke's age in ANH so that they could be heroes in their own right. (I never bothered with Young Jedi Knights since Anderson wrote those books.) I liked how all three of them were written in NJO for the most part. I got attached to them, and to a lot of others in the new generation of Jedi too, like Tahiri.

Many of those characters wound up either killed, derailed, or both. Thanks so much for that, Troy Denning.

I've read Darth Plagueis, and I've got to say: I liked it quite a bit. Hego Damask is a nice contrast from his apprentice, and while Palpy plays him like a fiddle it's ambiguous enough that he still has some Greater-Scope Villain in him. Though there are a few questions left on Palpatine. Specifically, why does it seem he's evil from the sperm? I get that he's not supposed to be sympathetic in any way, but him wanting to "murder his own father since a baby" seems over-indulgent. It almost feel as if he gets off on killing his relatives.

Pretty sure they've been playing him off, from the start, as the Anti-Christ to Anakin's Force Jesus. So really, Palpatine has always been the Star Wars galaxy's version of the child from The Omen. Literally Satan incarnate. Not a single ounce of anything even neutral in him, just straight up kill everything from inside the womb.

Then doesn't that mean it's not his fault he's evil? At least initially that is. I always found the idea of The Antichrist being demeaning to the actual villain. Being evil out of choice is far more effective than simply being created as evil, since the former both they are fully in control over their own malicious actions. You can have someone become evil over time while still making them unsympathetic in the slightest. Like if Sheev was your average noble who decided to cross the Moral Event Horizon because he was interested in power. Nothing sympathetic, but with the temptations of Hego Damask it gives him a motive.

By making him, or really anyone "evil since the sperm", it takes away agency in their actions. Palpatine isn't a horrible sociopath because he chose power and ego-rubbing over human decency, but because the dark side made him that way since. He's basically a self-aware slave of the dark side. That flies in the face of the very concept of evil(namely, it's something you choose in spite of goodness) and ironically makes him slightly less evil than if he chose willingly to become an avatar of the Dark Side/giant asshole..

And don't go "but he could've decided to be good!" What I mean was that his personality was pre-set to evil by something out of his control, which feels like. Maybe it's just me, but I honestly feel bad for him because of that. Same reason why I feel those born with a Lack of Empathy or were The Sociopath from conception/brain chemicals deserve an iota of sympathy.

No, I mean he's not even a person. He is The Dark Side incarnate. Satan's sock puppet. Killing him isn't even murder because . . . there's no him to murder. You're just tearing the sock off the Dark Side's hand. That's the old Palpatine. Only reason he had to grow and learn is because the Dark hadn't done that before. And then the Light Side created Anakin. Which IT hadn't done before, so it wound up with a whiny brat who turned dark.

TBF, Anakin while he was a slave was essentially an innocent, kind kid that just wanted freedom.

I think there is a large implication that Anakin's ego, bitterness, anger and whininess comes from Palpatine teaching him wrong in the background to contrast with Obi Wan's teachings.

Which should have been at least a little onscreen. Clone Wars had a bit of that, with Palpatine putting him in as many situations as possible where his only options were either to fail (thus resulting in the deaths of his friends and loved ones) or defy the Jedi Council again. But we didn't really see Palpatine giving him any secret "anger is totally a good thing" training.