Anakin, Yoda and the Tusken Raider Massacre

[Terralthra]

I just read Tatooine Ghost, to check out the source. Leia finds Shmi's video diary, in which Shmi says that some time after Anakin leaves, Qui-Gon sends her a gift in a box. In it, there's a message about him searching the HoloNet for something (the diary is damaged, so the message can't be made out), and a Tobal Lens, apparently. So some time after Qui-Gon takes Anakin away, but before he dies, he finds time to search the HoloNet for something for her, buy her a Tobal Lens (a key component in a rare ship, and apparently without which it's worthless), and send it to her as a gift. Watto just happens to have one of these rare ships, but without the Lens. Cliegg Lars' son Owen and Shmi come up with a plan where somone will try to buy it but refuse as it's in non-working order, she slips Lars the lens, and he buys Shmi's freedom with the lens.

It's tremendously hackish writing. How did Qui-Gon know the lens would be worth anything to her? Why did this gift take years to get there? At what point between leaving Tatooine and dying on Naboo did Qui-Gon buy a rare part for a rare ship and send it via courier (yes, courier, really) to Shmi such that it takes years for it to get there?

It's stupid on so many levels. That's the EU for you.

[Havok]

Oh wow... that is actually WORSE than if they had just wrote him giving her a gem that they happened to never mention in the movie. The EU never lets me down.

[JME2]

...You know, while I knew basics like that, I've never actually read Tatooine Ghost -- and after reading this excerpt I've no intention of doing so, now.

[PainRack]

Now do you see why I said Lars n Shimi love was cliched Havok?

JME2.. to be honest,the book wasn't that bad in some areas. It was meant to be a bridging novel,tying in the prequels to the old EU timeline. It worked,even for Thrawn. The problem is with the individual plot elements. Another doomsday evejt(New republic codes) require Classic heroes to resolve(Han n Leia).Alderaan the unique and beautiful. even thrawn wank,albeit used to show his nature rather than tactical genius.

[Havok]

Lars and Shmi in love is cliched when the garbage EU tries to explain something that doesn't need more explanation other than what is said in the movies.
Why couldn't Lars have just saved fucking money his whole life and finally found something worth spending it on? Even that is more explanation than what we actually need. What was said in the movies is more than enough.

And let me explain something to you... When we talk about Star Wars from in universe, you have to accept that what happened in the PT is what happened FIRST. You can't look on past events based on what is going to happen later and say something is contrived.

Even talking out of universe, you have to give some leeway that the writing of the PT would have been the same had it been written first. We can debate that that isn't true and I may agree with you, but if you look at the saga that way, nothing seems contrived or cliched.

Shmi is left alone and meets Lars. They fall in love and he somehow manages to buy her freedom from Watto. Anakin returns, meets his step father, brother and step sister in law, only to find his mother has just been kidnapped by Tusken RAIDERS, tries to save her, fails, rampages then leaves the planet.

So why exactly is it contrived or cliched that Obi-Wan would place Anakin's child with the closest thing to family he has and in a place so emotionally painful, that it almost certainly precludes Vader's return?

Even the Jango/Boba story line, fan influenced as it was, isn't contrived or cliched when you look at it in chronological context and without the garbage EU fucking it up.

Jango is a galaxy class bounty hunter hired to be the template of the clone army. He requests one unaltered clone as his son. That son, watches his father die at the hands of Jedi when he is 10.
Boba, the son, grows up to become a competent bounty hunter, but is mainly employed by gangsters and Jabba the Hutt. He is a good tracker, but never achieved his father's martial prowess, despite having his arsenal of weapons and gadgets and is easily dispatched by a Jedi in training and his friends.

Now, throw the fucking EU into it and Boba is UBERMENCH BADASS BOUNTYHUNTER EXTRAORDINAIRE THAT CAN NOT DIE!! MANDALORIANS ARRRRRRGGHHH!!!

Stick to the movies and you have a nice little father son narrative to parallel what we have in Anakin and Luke using minor characters that stay involved in the story through no fault of their own.

[Terralthra]

There's an even stupider line of reasoning here...

Even if you simply accept the hackneyed bullshit of "Qui-Gon managed to find time to buy a rare part for a rare ship that he then couriered to Anakin's mother in order to free her by means of a complicated plot involving a ship he didn't know existed, a part he didn't know it needed, and at least three people he did not know existed," why the fuck would Qui-Gon not tell Anakin?! He watched the boy, practically heartbroken, walk away free from his still-enslaved mother, also heartbroken.

I'm just going out on a limb here, but maybe if Qui-Gon was going to go to ridiculously precognitive and convoluted machinations to free Shmi, he should have fucking mentioned that to Anakin, and we know he didn't, because Anakin has continual recurring guilt through Episode 2 about not going back to free his mother, and the first thing he does on going back to Tatooine is to find Watto and ask him where she is. Anakin's attachment to his mother and guilt over leaving her is a driving plot element of Episode II!

He found time to concoct this convoluted plan to free her while on Coruscant, go buy the part, courier it to Shmi using Jabba's Discount Delivery Service ("it'll get there, eventually"), but couldn't find time to say "Hey, Anakin, btw, I freed your mother too, it just took me a minute of shopping in the 'rare starship parts' section. It's complicated, but she'll totally be free and happy"?!

[Havok]

You are misremembering some things IMO.

After the initial realization that Shmi wasn't coming, Anakin steeled himself for his life ahead. He had the one last moment of doubt that his mother reassured him about. Heartbroken, isn't quite what I though either of them felt. More like a caretaker releasing a wild animal back into the wild after caring for it for a long while. I know that may not compare quite right, but that is more like what it felt to me.

I also think that was intentional. Shmi always knew Anakin was not only special, but not really ever "hers" if you get my meaning. That he belonged to his destiny and that his time with her was always going to be short. Anakin may not have understood that like Shmi did, but he understood that his life moving forward wasn't going to involve his mother anymore.

Also, Anakin didn't feel guilt about leaving his mother. He felt guilt about not protecting and saving her and allowing her to be killed, which is what his "dreams" were telling him was going to happen. He also was angry that the Jedi weren't allowing him to do anything about it. It makes quite a difference in the character if you see it the other way. Anakin, while he wanted to free his mother, I don't think was ever really concerned about her safety as he really didn't have to be, being owned by Watto.

Shmi could have been freed and had the same exact life doing the same exact thing not as a slave and she would have ended up in the same situation. It was the whole "Let me address these dreams and go make sure my mom is safe" issue that was being denied that was fucking Anakin up, not whether or not she was still a slave or not.

His attachment is to her safety, not really her, if you get my meaning. I've always thought it was clear that it wasn't an issue until recently before EP II, not that it had persisted form the time he left Tattooine on.

[Stofsk]

...You know, while I knew basics like that, I've never actually read Tatooine Ghost -- and after reading this excerpt I've no intention of doing so, now.

Remember when Troy Denning was touted here as the best thing to hit the EU since sliced bread? I read the book and I was disappointed. Star By Star was probably the best New Jedi Order book that was written. Another way of saying this is that it was also terrible.

[Tychu]

Their strategy would have worked if they had stuck to it. Don't train anyone old enough to have already formed emotional attachments. Simple.

Also: where do you draw the line? Today it's Anakin's mother, tomorrow it's someone some other Jedi was fond of. Pretty soon that whole attachment thing is out of the window. Jedi are meant to go to an area, do their job and leave, not to go around setting up accommodation for whoever they wanted. By helping Shmi they would have been acknowledge that she had some special value to Anakin, which she wasn't supposed to.

First, Anakin was the CHOSEN ONE (tm) and thus presumably had some exceptions shoehorned in for him. Remember the big deal about the prophecy?

Second, the Jedi Order can't exactly call themselves the good guys if they let problems fester. I mean, why shouldn't they free slaves, lift poverty, cleanse corruption, heal the sick, and all that good stuff? Bringing the hammer down on bad guys is all well and good, but the Jedi Order are little more than rentacops with magic and glowy swords by the time of the prequels.

If you take Old Ben's quote from ANH. "For over a thousand generations the Jedi were guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic....". Is it possible that the Jedi had explicit rules given to them or enforced on themselves that they couldn't interfere with problems outside the Old Republic. And according to Shmi in TPM "The Republic doesn't exist out here" as well as Qui-Gon's "It's controlled by the Hutts" shows that Tatooine is not in the Republics boarders. Therefore the Jedi cannot interfere with the life of a Jedi's mother.

[Havok]

The Jedi, IIRC, had their duties and responsibility lessened over the years by the will of the Galactic Senate. It got to the point that we see in TPM, they responded to issues on the order of the Chancellor or Senate vote and then only on pretty big issues.
However, out and about the Jedi can do whatever they feel like. Especially if it's not in Republic space. Qui-Gon CLEARLY had no qualms about interfering with Shmi and Anakin's life outside of Republic borders. C'mon on now.

[Simon_Jester]

Am I the only one who thinks Havok's idea about just having Lars work his ass off makes more sense? To me, that sounds more romantic and a better basis for a stable relationship, anyway, because "freed by someone working their ass off and spending their life savings" shows more commitment than "freed by plot token."

Their strategy would have worked if they had stuck to it. Don't train anyone old enough to have already formed emotional attachments. Simple.

I'm not convinced of that. It's not like no other Jedi fell to the dark side; Dooku comes to mind during that same war, and there are lots of examples in the rest of the setting, the EU, of Jedi turning to evil either individually or in groups. The Jedi's official policy on things like family doesn't seem to have changed much over the millennia, and yet Jedi splitting up, turning on each other, and so on happens anyway.

Personally, I think it's something the Jedi do because the Jedi have always done it, and it doesn't really need to make a lot of sense in their eyes. It sort of works, but that's just because they always say the policy is responsible for times when Jedi resist temptation to do evil, and never say the policy is responsible for times when Jedi give in to temptation.

Also: where do you draw the line? Today it's Anakin's mother, tomorrow it's someone some other Jedi was fond of. Pretty soon that whole attachment thing is out of the window. Jedi are meant to go to an area, do their job and leave, not to go around setting up accommodation for whoever they wanted. By helping Shmi they would have been acknowledge that she had some special value to Anakin, which she wasn't supposed to.

Yes, but it's a circular argument: the Jedi must be detached in this way because the Jedi must be detached in this way. A Jedi must "let go" of remembering their mother (for fuck's sake, how young do you have to take a child so they won't remember their mother?) instead of, say, at least being reasonably sure that said mother lives on a planet with no space bedouin and exchanging postcards once a year? Why? Does it make that much difference?

I'm skeptical of this.