What would have to be removed, or changed to save LOTF

[Darth Yan]

Just curious; is it possible to save Legacy of the Force if certain things were removed or changed (i.e. Vergere being a Sith, The mandos, Jacen being to quote Darth Fanboy "[Sith Lite]", rather then a legitimately menacing villian); I enjoyed inferno and fury, but then Revelation pissed all over the work that Fury established, focusing more on the mandos. Just curious.

[Darth Fanboy]

That depends on whether or not you feel that the Legacy comics didn't already spoil it for you.

Once those books were announced as being set in the future, along with a new version of the Empire and Sith (yay for originality...) anything that Luke Skywalker did to promote good was going to be undone in a short timeframe and even if the books were good it would have all been cheapened to me. It wasn't like with the films where we had only snippets of Anakin Skywalker's backstory and vague references to something called "The Clone Wars" and nothing else.

I think removing Karen Traviss from the story, and putting in a third author to complement Denning and Allston would have been good. Then if Lucasbooks felt so obligated as to keep putting out Mandowank bullshit they could have sent her off with a pen, some paper, and a bottle of Astroglide to go write her own series. From the reviews posted here on this forum, her books did not mesh well with the others in this series.

As far as content goes? While the Killiks turned out to be an incredibly lame enemy, they were at least an attempt at something somewhat original. Same goes for the Vong. The Legacy comics were a ridiculous copy of the Clone Wars, even down to the naming of the factions. The ending ends up being a complete joke as well.

[Kartr_Kana]

I haven't finished reading the legacy comics (only got as far as where the rebels stole the Sith Empires big ship) and I liked them. It was fairly original from what I've read so far it's the Empire vs the Sith Empire. Grey Knights whose loyalty is to the Empire and not the Force. Even the art work made me think of when I first saw ANH. Did it go down hill since I've been gone?

The killiks are the borg in organic form the falcon has "nacelles" and can do warp...I mean hyperspace maneuvers. Seriously that series was what kept me from reading anything that takes place afterwords. Well that and the reviews posted here.

Burn LotF, burn the Swarm Wars, Burn everything by KT except for Hard Contact and you'll start to fix some of SWs problems.

[Samuel]

Set it much further in the future. Dump the Sith- lets have a new Dark Side movement. Have the Empire have a different name and image- the Galactic Union or some other name so it isn't so similar in imagary to Palpatine's Empire. Cut down on the Star Trek copying and the "everything is better".

[General Soontir Fel]

Here's my outline of a plan from one of the LOTF discussion threads, although I was talking in the context of a rewrite, which I'm still planning to do in this upcoming year:

1. Internal consistency with numbers and political alignments (the Imperial Remnant is part of the GA in Betrayal, with Pellaeon as GA's supreme commander, back to a separate political entity in Revelation).
2. Make Jacen a compelling villain, and have progressive character development rather than going back and forth. (In other words, if Jacen decides that he is Darth Caedus in one chapter, and thus has no twin sister, don't have him angst about fighting Jaina two chapters later--this actually happens in Revelation.
3. Write Star Wars, not a political commentary on current events.
4. Don't kill characters off for shock value; the death must have a purpose, and that purpose must be defined, and must not change from book to book to cover up the fact that the real purpose was, in fact, shock value.
5. Show that there are some consequences from the Yuuzhang Vong war.
6. No revisionist bullshit. Boba Fett hasn't killed "more Jedi than anyone", he hasn't killed any. He was thrown in the Sarlacc by a barely trained Jedi and a blind man.
7. Yes, we all seen the prequels. No gratuitous references to prequel events and locations, especially if the characters shouldn't know about them. If you make references, at least make them correctly. (Note to KT: Qui-Gon Jinn did not kill Darth Maul).
8. 54-year old women usually don't get pregnant. That goes double if they're married to 71-year old men.
9. *Group X has been in hiding from everyone, and no one knew about them, but they show up when it's convenient for the plot*. It was slightly compelling when Zahn did it with Thrawn. Then we had Palpatine's clones, Daala, Eye of Palpatine, Hand of Thrawn, the Shadow Academy, the Vong, Mandalorians, Kiliks, Lumiya, the Sith on Korriban, and now Daala again. There's a reason deus ex machina is considered a bad plot device.
10. No SoD-killing references to fandom (i.e. characters talking about Han "shooting first").
11. Competence on both sides. Jacen should have been killed a long time ago, but was saved by Luke's, Mara's, and Boba Fett's stupidity.
12. Consistent character spectrum. A quarter of the first book about X-wing pilots, a quarter of the second about Fett, a quarter of the third about Saba, Zekk, and the Hapans, then going through the cycle again is another of those things that kills SoD. Even the NJO, at least in the later half, wasn't that jarring.

Now that the series is over, we can add:
13. No Mandos. Self-explanatory.
14. The Joiner crap was a hallucination on the part of Jaina, Zekk, and other Jedi who overdosed on illicit drugs and needed Force-induced therapy to return them to a state approaching sanity.
15. Have what happens logically lay the seeds of Legacy.
16. For Force's sake, one way or another, resolve the Jaina/Jag/Zekk triangle. And no, Zekk being MIA is not the way to do it.
17. Do not create potential for Allana to be Luke Skywalker 2.0.

[Guardsman Bass]

I agree with the "Eliminate the Sith" thrust. It would have been much more interesting for Jacen to actually be the founder of a new "dark-side-using" order, or even one that is just much more morally ambiguous than the Jedi. After all, they already seemed to be splitting basically between those who wanted a Jedi Order like the old one, where the Jedi were effectively agents of the Republic, versus the "independent Order" group that wanted to do what is right, without being ordered around by the Republic or any other government. Why not follow that to the logical end as well, and have Jacen represent the leader of the "Jedi Independence" faction? That would certainly set you up better for the situation in the comics, where you have the Imperial Knights, than what happened in what I've read with regards to LoTF.

Show an aging and increasingly elderly Luke struggling to hold the two factions from completely separating (and failing), with Ben Skywalker trying to bridge the rift between the Order his father is a part of, and the order that his master (Jacen) is leading.

I guess it just always bothered me that they turned Jacen into more or less another "Only I can save the galaxy!" Anakin-style character after the end of the NJO arc. Even when he was under the "tutelage" of Vergere, he seemed much more compassionate.

Oh, and definitely eliminate the Mandos and Boba Fett - which basically means that you ban Karen Traviss from ever touching another Star Wars series.

[Darth Hoth]

I personally think a conflict between a "Skywalkerist" Jedi faction and a "Revisionist" one that wants to go back to Prequel-era lameness could be an interesting plot for about a trilogy or so.

[Kartr_Kana]

While I'm no fan of the PT Jedi I think that's the point. They found a method that worked to keep people from joining the Sith that worked for 1000 years. Part of the problem is that their very success has led to stagnation and a organizational hubris that allowed Palpantine to manipulate them and engineer their downfall.

[Darth Hoth]

I think that the New Jedi Order under Skywalker manages well enough in that respect. In any case, the angle about internal conflicts between Jedi factions has been much underplayed in the EU. The closest it came was probably the original Brotherhood of Darkness, before they were ret-conned into a bunch of goofy Sith derivatives.

[Kartr_Kana]

How many Dark Siders has Luke's academy produced? Brakiss, Kueller, Kyp, Jacen, not to mention Luke himself and I'm pretty sure there's others I'm forgetting. At least four in the hand full of years it's been running, compare that to 1000 years with only 22 Jedi leaving the order and only one of those (as far as we know) turning to the Dark Side. I'd say that Luke's New Jedi Order has done pretty horribly.

[Darth Hoth]

The old Order also had rather absurd standards (accepts only children socialised practically from birth and then discards a large amount of those into the AgriCorps). Luke took in anyone he could find, after the Empire had pretty much rooted out Force-sensitivity in the population. There are several additional examples to those you list, but one should remember that he had poor material to work with, and everything that could go wrong did (e.g., at least two students out of the first dozen or so were possessed by a dead Sith spirit).

[Kartr_Kana]

"socialized"? Not sure what you mean by that.

The old Order also had rather absurd standards (accepts only children socialised practically from birth and then discards a large amount of those into the AgriCorps). Luke took in anyone he could find, after the Empire had pretty much rooted out Force-sensitivity in the population.

Did you ever stop and think that they had those standards for a reason? Maybe that's why Luke had so many problems. Of course it's not really his fault like you pointed out the Empire had suppressed or killed almost all sensitives.

There are several additional examples to those you list, but one should remember that he had poor material to work with, and everything that could go wrong did (e.g., at least two students out of the first dozen or so were possessed by a dead Sith spirit).

First off that's his own dumbass fault (as Mara points out) for putting his academy in a Sith temple. Secondly the old Jedi Order had their own run-ins with Sith Ghosts. Apparently they'd figured out how to prevent this little problem before their 1000 years without a new Sith coming from their ranks.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Fuck it, the concept is stupid from the outset and the foundation it rests on (the previous Del Rey EU) is liquid shit. Its not salvageable.

[Ender]

A line in the next book talking about Jacen and the Solo's suing a holo-thriller company for libel, slander, and defamation of character in their latest series.

Bless you Stover for supplying us an easy out.

[Guardsman Bass]

A line in the next book talking about Jacen and the Solo's suing a holo-thriller company for libel, slander, and defamation of character in their latest series.

Now that would be hilarious. There's something of that sort in one of the Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy books, where Luke goes into a cafe which shows basically the events of Jabba's Palace from ROTJ, and decides he'd better leave before anyone there recognizes the real Luke Skywalker.

Bless you Stover for supplying us an easy out.

It would be nice to have Stover write some more Star Wars novels in addition to the ones he's writing now.

[Guardsman Bass]

I personally think a conflict between a "Skywalkerist" Jedi faction and a "Revisionist" one that wants to go back to Prequel-era lameness could be an interesting plot for about a trilogy or so.

It would certainly murk up the moral ambiguity a notch, and set the stage for "Imperial Knights" in a later series (assuming you want to go that way; you could just have them be Republic Knights, or Federation Knights). Think about if the "Agents of the Republic" faction had to hunt down and bring to justice the "Jedi Independence" faction (not necessarily kill them, but bring them to justice for things like vigilantism and the like).

[Illuminatus Primus]

"socialized"?

Socialization is the sociological term for the process by which a child is educated and conditioned to participate as a member of his culture and social group.

[Kartr_Kana]

Thanks

[Thanas]

One pet peeve of mine: Read what other writers have written before you. Do not turn political heirs in the mid-twenties into old-age retiree's in the next series.

Do not disappear characters when their presence makes sense. Example: Where was Pellaeon's force-user/confidante when he Spoiler

was assasinated?

[Coiler]

I would scrap the entire plot, then institute two rules for the EU as a whole:

1: It cannot involve another "ZOMG T3H GALAXY IS IN DANGER!!!" plot. It must be smaller scale in nature*.

2: No single book cycle can be more than three books long. This saves the customer money and forces the editors to make a tight story.

Let's face it, you could have a lot of good small-scale stories set as the galaxy struggles to rebuild from a massive war. Yet another Giant Threat to the Galaxy isn't nearly as compelling.

[Pelranius]

I wouldn't make the Hapans such a significant force in the galaxy. I don't care how rich they are, they only have sixty three bloody systems! I'll edit them out, just like with the Mandos. The Remnant can fill their place in the storyline.

And if one keeps the GAG, make Jacen a Generalissimo or something. A colonel in charge of a galactic wide secret police is a stupid idea.

[Guardsman Bass]

I don't necessarily mind the Hapans (although they don't really need to exist), although you would have to actually make them something of consequence - like a Corporate Sector-sized body out on the Outer Rim that had a sort of quasi-association status with the Republic during Old Republic times, and that was exceptionally rich for some reason or another.