NaNo Project: The Rebirth of the New Jedi Order: Love Ignites the Galaxy, Star by Star

[polgarawolf]

*Title: Love Ignites the Galaxy, Star by Star (*working title only, though it may become the permanent title by default).

Chapter Three: Fragments Shored

Rating: Uhm, probably a borderline R (?), for the overall work, though I suppose that's debatable . . . PG-13ish, maybe, for this part (?)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the lovely characters

Comments

[arkan2]

Hi. I'm not going to try to comment on everything that crosses my mind, or my comments would be even longer than the chapter itself.

However, I do have a fairly major issue with each of the last two sections. In the second to last one, I feel like you followed the original story a bit too carefully. Since Anakin didn't die in this one, you'd expect Leia's reaction to be slightly different, and Han's as well. Han especially, since in this case he didn't interpret Leia's behavior as necessarily meaning that Anakin was dead (which should imply that Leia's behavior should somehow be different too, for him to come to a different conclusion).

The last section brings up questions of timeline and characters' reactions. I had assumed from the previous chapter that LoBS era-Tahiri gave Jaina her memories first, then Anakin, then Jacen. But if so, then why did Leia and Luke feel Anakin first instead of Jaina? But then when Luke stretches out to them, it sounds like Jaina and Jacen have already gone through the forced-memories process, so why didn't they both cry out before Anakin, and why was Jacen's section in the previous chapter after Anakin's? I just ... don't get it.

[polgarawolf]

Wrote long response, and computer ate it. Don't have time to recreate entirely. Gist of it is this: events on and around Coruscant logically cannot deviate from the basic structure laid out in SbS. Things aren't really changing where Luke and Leia are, aside from the fact that they eventually completely lose all sense of contact through the Force with the entire Myrkr party instead of feeling Anakin's death on Myrkr. They have no idea what's happened on Myrkr, no way of finding out what's happened, and are having to deal with the possibility that Coruscant may very well fall and that Anakin and the others may be dead or may just have been captured for real by the Vong.

Briefly, Luke feels what he feels because Anakin is the only one Tahiri allows to surface back to full consciousness enough for him to be able to reach out to someone beyond the meld. His emotions spill over before Tahiri can quite manage to make him small enough in the Force to essentially vanish again. I can't make that much clearer here because the scene's from Anakin's p.o.v., not Tahiri's, and he doesn't know he's projecting past the meld. They're all going to be shocked when they get to Hapes and find out that Leia was terrified that Anakin was captured and perhaps killed by the Vong when he went small in the Force again. Jaina never surfaces enough to reach out to anyone, just like she was too focused on reacting to a perceived threat to think of reaching out to someone else when Tahiri first came at her, on the chalk dunes. What Luke feels through the twins is because of Jacen, not Jaina. He loses contact with Anakin, strains to reach someone else in the meld, gets Jacen as Tahiri is flooding him with her memories, and the tangle of shame and grief and pain and terror are 90% Jacen and maybe 10% sympathetic echo from Jaina, who's so close to her twin that even being made small in the Force and forced to lay still and sleep can't quite keep a part of her from knowing that her twin brother is suffering. They're twins - they're so tangled up in each other that you can't quite fully separate them, without one of them being the one doing the severing. And that can't be fully explained here because Jacen and the nature of his bond to Jaina and the proces of him trying to come to terms with accepting what he would've done and become and growing from that and finding a way to not let it crush him is meant to be the subject of a later work in this series. This is just a novella, a NaNo work mostly meant to set up a longer series. I can't get to all of what's going on and resulting from what Tahiri did in one work. This part is just focusing on the process of her getting there and sharing the memories. The next bit is for the reactions, from both the kids and Luke and Leia and Kyp and other, older Jedi. I would've been happier if I could've justified just glossing over Coruscant completely, but it's too big of a thing to leave out or summerize in nothing more than a scene in one chapter, so I was kinda stuck with almost all of the Corsucant-related scenes and unfortunately logically since actual events are not changing there, the material mirrors SbS very closely.

[arkan2]

Ouch, yeah, I really hate it when that happens.

I agree that in general, the Battle of Coruscant should follow the same structure they did in the original timeline.

My concern is with the details. Anakin did not expressly die in this timeline, therefore, Leia should not react exactly as she did in the timeline where he did. Because of that, Han should not respond to Leia's reaction exactly the way he did in the previous timeline.

Or, conversely (since it was a bit of a logical stretch to come to that conclusion the first time) his reaction could be the same, even though Leia's should now be slightly different. However, for his reaction to be exactly the same, that should include his conclusion that Anakin is, in fact, definitely dead. In which case, you would have to include a scene or at least a snippet of dialogue later for Leia to clarify the situation for him.

Here's another way to think about it. It seems to me you've changed the character's thoughts, but left the behavior that follows from those thoughts exactly the same. You've tried to change one variable while leaving all the others unchanged. Imagine trying to do that with a quadratic equation, or an ecosystem, or a society in the real world. It just doesn't work out. Small changes in one variable may make small changes in the other variables (though maybe not) but they do not make no changes.

So yes, the Battle of Coruscant will go on as it did before, and Han and Leia will go through the same basic actions as they did before, but the details of what they do and what they think will be slightly changed by this different factor. Stuff like Leia's exact reaction to events on Myrkr and Han's reaction to her, and like Han's reflection about how somebody will need to hold them together the way Leia did after Chewbacca died.

As for the explanation about Luke and the twins ... I can accept all that. I can even accept your not explaining it right away. However, a good story should not leave those kinds of loose ends hanging to be cleared up in author's notes. A good story (which I do absolutely believe you have going here) should address these nagging little details, or, at least, let the reader know that they will be addressed in the fullness of time.

I'm sorry if I'm coming across as overly anal here, but I'm trying to be a good critic. I really, honestly, truly feel you have a great story going here, and it's little details like these which can make the difference between a great story and a merely good story.

Overall, I think you've done an excellent job, and practically salivating for the time when I'll be able to sit down and read my next chapter (I think I'm up to #6). Thank you so much for doing this, and happy holidays.