New Testingstan

Ralin wrote:Indeed. The NJO wasn't perfect and I did get bored and skip to the finale around the time they started looking for the magic planet thing, but it was something new, got the EU moving in a coherent direction and told an epic story. I skipped the Dark Nest books because I'd already kind of fallen out of it. I picked up the first Legacy of the Force book, had mixed feelings but thought it had potential because hey, Aaron Allston...then I got to Traviss's part and went "...The fuck is this shit?" and stopped.

Also weren't there gay people in Star Wars towards the end?

Darksi4190 wrote:Denning seems to take a lot of the flak for how LotF turned out. I don't know if it's warranted though.

Was he more involved in the overall planning of that god-awful shit show than the other two?

Ralin wrote:

Darksi4190 wrote:Denning seems to take a lot of the flak for how LotF turned out. I don't know if it's warranted though.

Was he more involved in the overall planning of that god-awful shit show than the other two?

I stopped reading well before, but from the summaries I read the scenes where Tahari tries to seduce a very young Ben Skywalker and Jacen and Jaina's final duel where Jacen is described as having a bunch of used syringes sticking out of his face after a fall through some garbage spring to mind as "Fucked up shit Denning is responsible for that should not be in Star Wars"

Darksi4190 wrote:With the big three bowing out in crucible and the lasting effects of LotF dealt with there was certainly potential for it to be interesting again.

Whether or not that potential would've been squandered is something we'll never know.

Nobody145 on TFN wrote:I'm not entirely sure, and this is all just speculation, but assuming I understand how fictional writing works, there has to be a beginning and end, and the journey between those two points. The way LotF was presented, it seemed like they had a beginning, but not much of an ending or middle and only vague ideas left up to the authors to decide, which is why they all focused on their areas of expertise/pet characters.

Again, just speculation, but maybe they wanted Jaina vs. Jacen for the final fight. But short of Luke getting hit on the head and tied up like Jaina was for the TUF finale (and while TUF was good, too bad Jaina's Tsavong Lah victory was already in the past by then, and it might just be me, but often it seemed like Lah's successor, Nas Choka, kept going on about what a fanatical obsessed idiot Lah had been), it'd be hard to come up with a reason for Jaina vs. Jacen instead of Luke vs. Jacen. Unfortunately, instead of simply being restrained like Jaina was during TUF, they came up with another way to sideline Luke- have him "tainted" by Mara's death and then killing Lumiya for it. So since Mara had to die, they just had Jacen kill her and use it as his accidental sacrifice.

The whole Sith sacrifice thing was silly, but then Lumiya was mostly just spouting rubbish anyway, and Jacen was always too dumb to see past it. Sure, he has to fall to stop this war... that Lumiya is igniting. Sure, in other falls there have been other "sacrifices", in terms of supposedly being past the point of no return, where there's no choice but to keep falling. Or at least as a sign of commitment, to show they've chosen the dark path and can't be reached, supposedly. Of course, Luke redeemed Vader, and while the Bantam books weren't the greatest written, at least a few times there Luke did try to show some mercy to darksiders, such as Brakiss. It wasn't consistent, but at least it popped up more than with Jacen.

If Jacen had been written as too far gone from the beginning, I still would've hated it, but instead his Darth title almost came about accidentally, as he was defending himself against Mara. In a way, Jacen's indecision about who to sacrifice to prove he's a big bad Sith now is a perfect indicator of LotF's lack of structure and planning. Killing Allana would have been really dark, but Tenel Ka maybe they could have gotten away with, although it would mean using the cliche of killing the hero (well, protagonist in Jacen's case) girlfriend for shock, drama, angst, blah, blah, a few more cliches, that kind of thing. Though its kind of funny that even when Jacen suggest other possibilities in terms of "those he has a bond with" he brings up his parents, and even Lumiya rejects that idea since Jacen could care less about them by that point.

Sacrifice was just in almost every aspect an awful book (unless you just really, really love Boba Fett, and his sub-plot had little to nothing to do with the rest of the book). Invincible really put the nail in the coffin of post-NJO potential, but Sacrifice was probably when it was clear that the series was too far gone.

Going back to Luke, TUF and the NJO in general had just built up someone who was supposed to be the Jedi Grandmaster, though NJO still does seem a bit too stretched out for me (and Luke didn't start using the Grandmaster title until the horrible DNT, though that was effectively his position already) then just for manufactured crisis they had to get rid of him without actually killing him (as can't possible touch the Big Three too much, everybody else is fair game) which led to LotF (and FotJ too) scrambling around to find some way to sideline him, without a galactic army around to keep him busy... so instead they just come up with new wars and new armies to try and keep him busy but without proper setup (and though NJO was really long, at least there was a gradual escalation of danger) the plot just feels... stupid. I do wish there had been some final fantastic book to redeem everything that had come before (or to at least end things on a high note), but oh well, its over now. Now just have to hope Luke's life never reaches such a dire state again.

Crazedwraith wrote:Is anyone else really sad that they roped Allston into doing the big main plot books with the collabrative story arc. (who comes up with the overall arc anyway, the editors or something?)

If they'd just sat him down and given him free range to do say... six x-wing books or something. How awesome would that have been by comparison?

Stofsk wrote:I can't say I'm at all surprised that Denning's EU work turned to such utter shit. I found Star By Star overrated and didn't particularly care for Tatooine Ghose either.

Stofsk wrote:By overrated I mean I didn't find superduperfabulousome, which is what it's often hyped up to be.

It's serviceable, and has a decentish story, but I suspect people like it because it has biggatons rather than actual awesome writing.