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[deaka]

You know, it's pretty disturbing that Denning-penned events are so easily identifiable by the gore level alone. Even just scrolling through Wookieepedia in the LOTF-era entries, I picked two instantly by the fact that

Comments

[gabri_jade]

Exactly. And unlike Stover, who also writes graphic violence that can make me cringe, Denning's mostly feels gratuitous. At least that's how I always feel reading it. And female characters always get the short stick in a Denning novel. I've seen people say, "Oh, but Jaina was so great in Invincible" - um, no, she wasn't. She was actually put down so much that it's a miracle she survived at all. She constantly doubted her own ability to match Jacen, Ben talked down to her, her mother backed Ben up in doing so (in front of Jaina!) and made borderline-denigrating comments about Jaina being frigid, when she said that Jacen had been surprised to see her, her own father said, "What? He didn't think a girl could do it?", and even the hostage she took toward the end laughed at her feeble attempts to finagle information out of another crew member. I don't call that empowering.

So, yeah. There's a rambling comment for you to match the rambling post. :p

[deaka]

I'm exactly the same -- I get a strong sense from Denning's writing that the violence exists purely for the shock factor, because it's just so clumsy and OTT.

Not up to Invincible yet, but it's bothering me hugely in Revelation that Jaina is being forced to humiliate herself before Fett because apparently she's completely forgotten that she's a skilled Jedi with extensive combat experience under her belt. I mean, she trained under Mara, and I can hardly see Mara failing to teach her such basic skills as oh, don't let your guard down around ageing Mandalorians. She's also been through the Vong war since then, and it's just a joke to have her kissing up to Fett for his so-called wisdom. (And I'd like to know who these many, many Jedi are that Fett has supposedly killed, because I cannot understand where 'killed or captured more Jedi than anyone' is coming from).

[viariskywalker]

The only explanation I can come up with is that we've branched off into an alternate universe where apparently people can survive the Sarlacc, women are inferior to men, and Mandalorians rule the galaxy after not doing anything important for 4,000 years. Maybe one day we'll wake up, and someone else will be publishing Star Wars books that actually make sense.

And I love rambling posts, too. :D

[gabri_jade]

Jaina is subjugated through the entire series. I mean, Revelation is pretty much the first time we see her for more than a handful of paragraphs at a time, and look at what an idiot she's shown to be and treated as there. Invincible is no better.

Fett hasn't killed or captured a single Jedi according to his Wookieepedia entry or any source material I could remember. Seriously, I have no idea where Traviss read or heard anything that could have even hinted at such a thing. I'm left with the conclusion that she plans to rewrite his history as she supposedly has Fenn Shysa's. Thank you for that, LFL.

[naela]

Honestly I love it when people do rambling posts at 1am :P

I'm sure you've heard of WIR, I think I've actually seen its usage in a few Star Wars forums before, but your two examples are just textbook fridgings right there.

I really don't have a high opinion of Denning as a writer and it just seems to me that he likes to add violence to his work to make things seem darker. Of course due to his shoddy writing his violent scenes end up more laughable than dramatic.

[deaka]

1 AM posts are great -- it all seems so insightful at the time. :p

WIR syndrome is very much present in the EU. I did a rambling post about it a while ago, because it's really pretty disturbing. Every female character in the series is either killed (Mara and numerous side characters), thrust aside and made all but irrelevant (Leia), or made to regress and forced into a highly subservient position, regardless of her past development (Jaina, Tahiri). Even looking at the villains, you have crazy Alema (now also dead) whose predominant motivation was her twisted vanity, and disfigured Lumiya, who hung around long enough to be of use in pushing Jacen on his way and then had her head cut off by Luke for something she didn't even do. It's all a bit skeevy.

They do, don't they? Any emotional factor is completely invalidated by the ridiculous level of overkill on the violence and the fact it's all done so clumsily.