Depth and Transformation - Traitor #161

Hello there everyone have a seat on your monster couch and get ready for another episode of tap calf transmissions i'm cory joined as always by mr justin eckhart's ladder how are you doing today justin did you just imply that all our viewers have fat asses no okay just wondering the couch is a monster okay but is it a monster because it's the only thing that will hold the the girth No, I didn't say plant your cake on your monster couch Okay Some of you though,

if you got it, plant it If you don't, you're welcome, all the same, I've got, I'll say A pretty small butt Yeah, I got a small butt, Charlie, he's not on this episode But he's got a big old That thing is swinging. Justin did catcall Charlie on the way Home from the board game cafe So that,

My wife's encouragement, I'll just say yeah see it's been uh in my memory for a while until the last time we talked about that it had somehow been turned into kelsey was the one that did it and just without you being involved in any way so no it 100 was you okay but i think the fact that you had mentioned kelsey encouraged it had just turned into kelsey and done it to me but as you can all tell we are going to be talking about the new

jedi order traitor tonight because that's the only star Star Wars book that I haven't packed yet, but yeah, any, any big Star Wars news that we want to get to before talking about Mr. Matt Stover's traitor. Any other news? Not really. There's been like some movie stuff, but it's all nonsense, right? Yeah. The stupid rumors that are stupid and then stupid non-ruths. It's the whole thing was stupid. So we're, no one needs to know about it. No one should know about what happened.

And I don't want to talk about what didn't happen. So no, Other than that, I don't really think there's very much. We're still sort of in the dead zone here, so it's a very good time to be revisiting the new Jedi Order. Other than that, yeah, not a whole lot. We're still waiting for the Bad Batch trailer that Jennifer Corbett has been teasing relentlessly on Twitter for like the last two weeks. So it's coming. She wouldn't be doing this if there was nothing coming.

But you know what? I'm not that excited for the trailer. I don't know. I don't know why. I just feel like it's not going to give away very much. And it's like, I don't know. I just I just want the season to get here. Yeah, they've already got me in the show. I don't need the trailer.

Trailer's not really for me but i might make a clip on it so yeah that's true it'd be nice to have something to talk about christ's sake there's always plenty to talk about justin, it's not star wars's responsibility to give youtubers mountains of content to dribble out of our upload button so i think it is i got a family i know you're right you're right yeah everything should just be structured around youtuber content i've read the essential guide to warfare so many times keep having

to replace it the spine can't handle this i've gone through well i'm on my third but yeah i i have a digital copy and i have the the physical copy so i depending on what i'm doing i i go back and forth just so i can make sure that it's going to survive we won't you'll have to buy another one at some point i should have bought like a box of 10 And when I packed my bookshelf is just three Titanic parts right now.

So the only stuff that I haven't packed, it's like there's some making of Star Wars books there. There's traitor because I knew it was the next thing we're going to be doing. And then I have essential Atlas and essential guide to warfare. So that's that's me. Good on lore videos for the rest. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, it's it's the digital version is really nice. I wish they would have fixed the binding issue But at this point it ain't happening.

Not happening. We're lucky that they keep pressing that print button on them. So, I mean, it's probably just the same box that they've had stored in the corner for a few years now. Yeah. That's like when we, uh, when we get girl guide cookies, we buy an entire case, which is, I think it's 12. So we buy like 60 bucks worth of girl guide cookies and it lasts us for like a year. Actually, I don't eat them. It lasts my wife a year.

Yeah. Yeah, when I ordered my vanilla Coke and I put him away thinking it was going to last me a year if I spaced it out, it didn't. Yeah. So never does. You're a Coke goblin. Yeah, I do be gobbling that Coke.

But just a nice little adventure on Coruscant for Jason today. I guess there's nothing else to talk about, so we can just talk about about Traitor.

Yeah, Matthew Stover. how many books did he write for star wars legends like four uh there's mindor there's traitor there's revenge of the sith if you want to count that as legends yeah yeah and there is shatter point okay it's just the four okay so four books all of them are pretty good at least at least i'd say very good he's one of the better star wars writers not just in terms of like story but i I actually think he's he's a better writer than than most, like in terms of. Yeah.

Like emotionality, just everything like like this is the first book where I think the usual on Vaughn truly feel like as repulsive as they should. Yeah, but I mean, so much of that is just a function of what Stover needed them to be for the story or like what perspective they needed to have for the story. I think earlier on in the series, there was a lot more of that. And you get a bit less of it. The first two novels, yeah.

Yeah, the first two novels when they're kind of encountering all the technology for the first time. But I just thought this book did a really good job. So first of all, there's something fairly unique about this novel when compared to, at least as far as I'm aware, every other NJO book, and that is that it follows single perspective for 99% of the book. You're following Jason.

And that's pretty much it. It's Jason's journey. Like occasionally you'll have a chapter cut away to a character who's about to interact with Jason or who is interacting with Jason. But I was very happy. It's actually really rare in Star Wars in general that you're not hopping every chapter between usually three different sub stories. So plots.

Yeah, it's a lot of Stover's books are just character studies for different characters where you've got like, Like this is kind of the Jason book and Virgier, I guess, to a certain extent. This is like the there's also like Revenge of the Sith becomes very much Obi-Wan and Anakin character study. Shatterpoint is kind of the Mace Windu book. And like I was reading through some some interviews that Stover had done talking about the books.

Books and like mindor was intentionally kind of getting back to just the trio on an adventure, which by the time it was written was something that they weren't doing as much anymore because, his whole thing with writing the books he agrees to do is that he doesn't want to do them if he doesn't feel like he's bringing something to the characters and that had stopped him from wanting to do a book about han luke and leia for

a while until he realized like oh well sometimes you don't A bit more freedom with Shadows of Mindor as well. Like, it's quasi-canonical, really. Yeah, it's more of a, like, Clone Wars style, almost like the documentary or fake newscast. You can interpret it through that lens, but yeah. I'm excited to get to that one, because we've done every other Stover book now. Yeah, I forgot we had done Shatterpoint. We did that, I think, when it got the re-release.

One thing that, like, you mentioned the character study. You're right. You definitely, like, and not surprising, but there's a big...

Comparison we made here between how anakin is portrayed in the revenge of the sith novel and how jason is portrayed in this novel especially when he's dealing with his his dark side urges anakin's you know they talk about how he's got the he's got the dragon inside his heart that always wants to come out there are various different a lot of what jason deals with in this book is kind of handled in that way like metaphors or him you know personifying some feeling inside side of him

so definitely notice some comparisons there yeah like the you get a little bit of that with both jason and jana because they each get a standalone book after after star by star which i think is a good way if you want to set them up as kind of the the next main characters for star wars and give people a taste of star wars without han luke and leia and instead focusing on jason and jana and but i do think that traitor stands out to a lot of people a lot of people a lot better

than dark journey ends up it's just it's such a better written book i think then.

Now whether you agree with the philosophy like i think that's that's totally up in the air and that's kind of one of the strengths of the novel as we'll talk about as well but yeah for me just like the quality of writing in this one the only the only thing i took took issue with was some of the dialogue i thought was a bit weak ganner's dialogue was kind of just like he spends the the whole novel being like a skittish teenager, which I guess is kind of what he is.

I mean, he's not a teenager, but that's kind of what he is. But some of the, some of the dialogue for him wasn't great. Um. But overall, yeah, just a really well-written book. Now, it's been a while since we've been with the character of Jason.

Do you want to kind of set the story for where he is right now?

Right. So a couple of books ago, which is like eight months ago now, we covered Star by Star, which involved a mission by all of your favorite characters from Young Jedi Knights and Junior Jedi Knights going to the planet Mercure on a zany adventure to destroy the Voxen Queen, which was a kind of a Jedi hunting beast that the Vong had made and were proliferating throughout out the galaxy and were pretty successfully hunting down a bunch of jedi so all the

kids went half of them got killed off jason and jana their brother anakin was killed jason was taken captive by the yuzon vong through the help of vergier and so he's been missing for a while everyone thinks he's dead except for leia who is convinced he's still alive sent jana into a dark spiral that That she's still kind of dealing with. And surprise, surprise, Jason. Not dead. He's just in Yuzontar. Yeah. In Yuzontar. So we see the fall of Coruscant in Star by Star.

And we visited it since. Where it's, you know, it's very different. But in this book, it gets fully transformed. And I saw you tweet something about this. It is a shame that the later novels totally drop that. I can't, or not totally drop it, but it, like... The impact is so minimal. It gets a bit of lip service at the start of Darkness, but then it's just, like, Coruscant is back exactly. I can't remember if they move the planet.

So, for one, the planet is, like, it literally shifts orbital positions. They move it closer, because what the Yuuzhan Vong are trying to do is recreate their homeworld. So they've got, like, this seed ship, which has some of the genetic samples from their galaxy left, which is all pretty much dead. So this is an incredibly precious vessel to them. They move Coruscant closer to the sun to make it, or the Coruscant star to make it warmer.

They destroy one of Coruscant's moons, giving it a planetary ring. But more dramatically, once the life takes hold on the planet, it becomes almost unrecognizable. At one point, Jason is staring out, looking at it before he realizes where he is.

He's like looking out at the cityscape which is now covered by jungles and he doesn't even realize he's on coruscant which i i think it's interesting because the whole novel this is a very very dark novel and it's like the continual destruction of all these things that like we the reader have held dear that the kids also hold dear like anakin the relationships they all had as young jedi knights now like coruscant which has been a staple even before the prequels in star

wars legends a staple you know it's it's where many of the books start off it's where the solo residence is it's kind of like usually like a home base and now it's been completely desecrated pretty much yeah and i'm gonna throw out something mind boggler mind bending here and it's that it's almost like coruscant is used as a visual representation it's reshaping for the reshaping of jason solo and that's just uh very deep stuff going on in trader very deep very deep.

Yeah so so that's interesting and yeah this book is really dark so it starts off the thing that everyone knows traitor for i think is jason's torture and i actually was kind of surprised how early it was over because i hadn't read the book in a while this kid barely went through anything it's like he's he's out of it really quickly like he's out of it quickly in book terms in book terms yes but i remember it being like half the book or more yeah but he's out of

it in like a fifth i'd say the first one-fifth of the 20 of the book he's out and he moves on to like a different kind of torture.

And that's kind of like he goes through existential angst yeah he goes through several ordeals but the actual torture itself at the uh the hands of the uh embrace of pain is actually pretty short yeah so the embrace of pain is basically a use on vong contraption that is used to just torture people and it's kind of a religious experience for some of them especially some of the warriors we've seen in the past yeah yeah and so vergier has convinced nominor that if they

can break jason in this way or if they can expose him to that that he's learning the true way or like i don't think nominor is really convinced that this is going to happen but he's on board to he's kind of down for anything he doesn't believe in their religion but he thinks this might be fun and save on law is is probably on board with it but but yeah so they do a lot of torturing and vergier.

She's a very strange character like even once you finish the book so vergier is clearly like, ostensibly she's trying to do something she's trying to transform jason into a tool for the however in truth she's trying to transform him for some different purpose which she sees great potential in him obviously so it's it becomes one of the more controversial things in legends because this book becomes the kickoff point for what eventually turns into darth kydus jason as a a Sith Lord and.

So Vergier eventually gets retconned into having said she's a Sith which is not what Matt Stover intended she's clearly not a Sith when you read this novel, she's clearly like because one thing you gotta remember as well is that she has been under Vaughn control for several decades now and she was a Jedi, She gets captured by the Yuuzhan Vong. So I think it's fair to say that she's been transformed into something a little bit strange as well. Yeah.

Like, she's a pragmatist in a way, but she's also a philosopher. Like, her big, you know, the big thing she espouses to Jason is kind of, I guess it's like the early bits of the Unifying Force. There's a lot of Potentium in there that's... Right. Right. Where it's a little different than I remembered it, I guess, where the force itself is neutral. It's just an energy source. The force that you use force lightning for is the same force that you use to heal somebody.

It's just it all comes down to what's in the heart of the user. And what your key bindings are in KOTOR. What your key bindings are in KOTOR, exactly. And if you use a bed spell, you take more, you lose more FP. If you're not ice get yellow and that means you're evil which you know if i think about you know yoda's teachings to luke on dagobah when he's talking about the force.

You know he doesn't say the dark side is anything different what he warns luke about is really using the force in the wrong way i think because he does say like you will know no like like when you're using the dark side but like like he also emphasizes that it's like it's really when you're acting based on anger or fear so you know that's sort of in line with what brazier is arguing but you can also see how like brazier's points can end up leading to some pretty messed up stuff yeah so the

way stover talks about it in interviews is so his intention with vergier is this idea that she is more akin like the intention with her in this book is that she is the traditional jedi like this is what the old order would have been like and luke is what's different luke is the the less clearly a jedi where like luke had been trained by yoda and obi-wan for the purpose of taking down the Empire and what that required

was very different from what the old Jedi Order was and that's what Luke brought forward with him. We should keep in mind this is being written in 2002 or probably 2001. Yeah. So obviously a little bit.

Wrong in his interpretation of that but he also he very much doesn't think the dark side is a thing and he doesn't like the idea of the force as like its own entity that has a will and i i sympathize with that a lot i i don't like the whole ontological good and evil whether you are on or off the dark side yeah like the whole like the fact that anakin decided to throw palpatine rather than luke down a fucking hole doesn't mean

that anakin is now a good person and everything that that he'd done before doesn't count doesn't mean that the good side of vader yeah it doesn't mean that the good side of the force was flowing through him either necessarily yeah like it that as jason realizes in this book which i think is the one of the better parts of how he portrays this is that like yeah the dark like the dark things he's doing aren't because of some separate entity from himself that

he needs to be afraid of it's a thing that he himself is choosing to To give in to. Yeah, I like that part as well. And yeah, like it's not it's not a separate like bro. You're at the Jedi Temple. What are you talking about? Dark side hours here. It's just you. You're the one who stinks. But there's so much of what Jason and Virgier end up doing in this where like Jason 100% just gives into what like however you want to portray the dark side.

Jason Jason does that thing. and he was also perfectly willing to keep doing that thing for a good chunk of the book so even ganner risotti at the end yeah so it's kind of weird that he doesn't believe you know in the force having a will of its own when ganner risotti or risod i say risotti he very clearly like he's he's almost possessed by something beyond himself he becomes like i don't know how you can call Ganner's last stand anything but

him being a tool of the force he kills like a thousand well hundreds of you Jean Vaughn he's performing incredible feats where he's like fighting with his lightsaber and then also holding up these statues to deflect things and crushing people with pillars, you know it's not the only time we'll see something like this I think part of that comes from the fact that anything Ganner does you have to describe him as a tool so if he's using the force he is a tool of the force that's true.

But like one, but during that sequence, he talks about how he had to be enjoying it as well. Like, like he, he had to be more than just a participant. He had to be, you know, joyous, a joyous dancer or whatever he says. So the bit, I didn't know how to think about that necessarily. Well, it comes down to one of the problems that I have with the philosophy. If it's going to be applied, like writ large, that's getting represented here.

It's like with the whole Gardner thing. it's that it and you end up with a system where it's about like finding out who you are and acting within that but as long as you fit within a certain group of people who are allowed to do that or as long as you're important enough to be able to do that because like these important lessons that jason's being taught by vergier this power that he's being given is basically vergier thinks thinks it's both true and right that

jason be put in a position where he makes these choices and everyone else should have to live with that yeah and and that's why like i think like vergier is like a pragmatist but not necessarily correct like the whole idea of the gardener is a little disturbing because it they talk about how there's weeds and flowers flowers to be cultivated weeds weeds to be pulled and like that's not a very jedi way to see the universe even like to actively see all

the yu zhan vong as weeds which must be destroyed it's not a great way to see the universe and if you think about how jason's character develops like that sort of thinking is in line with how he does end up falling to the dark side and like that's why i don't like the part of the reason why i don't like the retcon of vergier being a sith like i think it's much more interesting that like she's like maybe a corrupted Jedi but like having her be a Sith adherent specifically just doesn't feel right.

I think you can, I don't know how explicit you have to take any of the version was a Sith statements. Like, I think there's enough maneuverability with all of them that you can get around. I think it's like the, the guide to the force. Yeah. Lumia. So in legacy, the force Lumia is the one that says where Jira was a Sith. Then you have like the scene with her and crate and you have like some mentions in source books.

I think it's like the guide to the force or Jedi and Sith, whatever, where there's like one of the notes saying where Jira was a Sith. But like, I think there's enough, I think like having people make that assumption about her because of what she's saying in universe, I think you can have that make sense without saying that she was a Sith.

Like there, there is the whole thing where like she was learning from Palpatine or whatever before, but it depends on when she got these ideas about the force. Cause like the, the stand she takes on the dark side, like the whole,

oh, so as long long as you kill people with your lightsaber instead of the big lightning thing then you're okay that she kind of yeah like that's the the essence of what she's telling to jason and that's the kind of stuff that like outside of jedi power battles a lot of the jedi aren't going to be cool with so if she was on that track beforehand and if both her and jason see the force is this thing where they can learn all aspects from it and that's not

what determines dark versus light then like i don't think they would ever label themselves sith in the way that jason ends up doing more that lumaya puts the label on vergier but i think it's something that you can still get through and say she was willing to learn about those things but didn't apply that label to her it is certainly sith like thinking like i don't know whether that was the intention attention when writing the novel or not because it's just you know

like the sip many set even jason who's following they don't see themselves necessarily as evil you know like jason sees himself as a caretaker like he's got the best interest for the galaxy at heart he's got to make the tough decisions to make sure that his daughter survives and is in a peaceful galaxy Alexi, you know, be an authoritarian for 20 minutes and kill the bad guys. And, you know, that's not that much different than what he's learning here.

Yeah, he's entirely willing to use Ganner as a tool when he needs to without giving him that information to make the choices himself. And like Virgier is not giving Jason actual information. She's putting him in these situations where he has to choose to either trust her or not. where he has to make the decisions about who he is and what he's going to do, but neither of... She's a lot more willing to give Jason that agency than Jason is willing to give Ganner as well.

Like, so they're, they're not entirely the same, but yeah, Jason never really gives Ganner a true choice. Ganner chooses to try to kill himself and Jason doesn't let him like when he falls, he wants to kill himself and Jason's like, nope, too late. The warnings he does give Ganner where he's trying to like scare him away. Then he tries to like force him out the door.

Like that's not, that's still not giving him a choice of any kind which you can it's more excusable at that point because it's like i have limited options and like i i can't do too much more but he's always limiting the information that he's giving him and if you know anything about like the few things that jason does know about ganner should tell him that these aren't things you do if you want to discourage just ganner so zero points to jason

on that i did quite like i thought i felt a lot of dread for ganner in that moment like when he's walking towards the the well of the world brain i did a good job with that yeah so what do you think was going on with jason in the force in this book, like his inability to access it or yeah just everything and how we can sort of because a lot lot of it like he like so there's various lessons the first lesson is kind of just generally in the embrace of pain he

learns about you know managing pain not just physical pain but yes physical pain but also psychological as well.

Especially because of the death of his brother. Then later, so he goes from there to this, what do they call the slave area again? They got a name for it. The creche of some kind? Yeah, anyway, in there. Yeah, so what do you kind of think is going on with Jason and the force in this book? I mean, Brigere is always.

Manipulating people's ability to see the force or to see herself in the force, and can apparently just take away his ability to interact with it except for the dark elements of it. Did she actually, though? Because, like, she never... There's not, like, an instance where he actually explicitly gets it back. He just kind of realizes, hey, I still have the Force.

Yeah, like, there's some kind of block that she put on him, which, like, she interfered with him in some way, like, with some traditional means through which he was able to use the Force.

And then the first times he's able to use it again are through like pain and anger and rage and whatever that allows him to bypass that or access it in it through a different avenue which i think is part of showing him that it's all part of the same thing that like the dark elements are just himself but it's i don't know what like the the physical mechanism for that really was and i don't know if it's like a fear response he had where

he shut himself down that's what i was Kind of wondering whether it was Meant to be Vergier or whether it's something going on With him, It could be an extension of How he shut down to not let Jaina Sense him But like he's, He's not doing well Like this isn't something you do to someone If you want them to not develop PTSD He is a really tough go when Ganner Finds me and he's in a bad way. He also kind of gains a version of a Vong sense.

I largely do do, it seems the implant kind of the, it's kind of weird. Cause it's almost the opposite way. He gains this Vong sense where it's the anger he gains. He gets access to the force again. It's, it's like talks a lot about empathy. Yeah. He's able to interact with the usual Vong. And at the end, when he connects with the world brain, the, the Duriam again, it's like, it's an empathetic connection, which is very Jason.

If, if you've read the, the young jedi knights you know he's always interacting with living beings like that, he does like making friends but the like part of it ties into what we're going to see with destiny's way where vajir talks to luke a lot about like why they can't sense the vong in the force but every author seems to have a different take on why that is and what it means so it's it's hard to look at any real through lines through that because with,

with all, with a lot of them, at least the, what it boils down to is the idea that like, it's not the force that's wrong. It's not the use on Vaughn. That's wrong.

Because like Luke has the moments where he thinks of like, Oh, should we just kill all of them because they don't fit my view of the force and Virgins are like, Oh no, maybe don't do that. That's, that's not very cash money, but the, the. So it felt to me as if Vergeer is doing some of this to kind of widen Jason's perspective to be able to take those first steps into actually ending the war with the Vong.

Because like my my preferred way to look at all of it is that if obi-wan and yoda were preparing luke to take down the empire and that colored his training and how he ended up coming out of it then vergier's methods for training jason and vergier's goal with training jason having spent the last 70 years with the yuzan bong or whatever was hoping like doing things the way that she could with the Yuuzhan Vong watching them all the time,

but also trying to do things in a way that would show Jason how the Yuuzhan Vong think, what the Yuuzhan Vong believe. And the flaws within how they think to allow him to kind of end the war without it just becoming a genocide.

And I don't know if that's actually the intent. I don't think it is, but I think so much of what they're doing ends up making sense through that lens while still allowing some way for it to be like this just fucked up jason beyond compare or beyond reason and having that kind of explain how he spirals later on but i know some people won't, yeah a lot of the you're i think it's lots of good points the way the force is in this novel it's.

The usual bong they describe it as they compare it to like light where humans can see like one one visible spectrum of light or the visible spectrum of light but there's a whole there's whole other the rest of the spectrum we can't see maybe the force is kind of like that now this is just the hypothesis of jason the eugene vonger from another galaxy things are different over there, yeah we'll learn more about that kind of next book as well i think next book is the alpha red one right.

Yeah, it's the election one. So right. So I think the I think that's the Alpharet one, because after that is when like they're like Luke and Jason are gone, right? There's not many books left. No, I think Berger dies. Next book spoiler. No, no, I don't think she's hold on. I always forget there's like one or two that I just miss out on in whenever I'm thinking of it, because I don't think he back nine is in hmm, destiny's way.

Mm-hmm. But maybe it is. Because, yeah, if they leave afterwards, it must be. I liked it. Brigitte was funny in this book. She's like a weird Yoda in a way. Yeah. She's always like hopping around and like smiling and just being a total freak. Yeah. Is that just like an extension of that being what we know about the older Jedi at this point?

That like oh that must be the i get the little phantom menaces out by then but i don't know i don't think so i think she's meant to just be i just think they're going he was going for the same weird mentor aspect yeah that she has i like how stover had to uh come up with an explanation for the tears nonsense you can just be whatever the fuck i want yeah i don't know the.

So yeah, like the any female Fosh's tears can do some of this stuff, but it's just the the four sensitive ones. That's what you need to. She can like she like majored in organic chemistry at the Jedi Temple. So she's like, I can cry jizz if I want to. I mean, some of the scenes with Jason, it seems like she does want to cry jizz and I'm very. Jason gets his pubes pulled out. Can we talk about that?

Explicitly we can i guess i just he's naked in the embrace of pain and he he says that he is hairless and they say from his they like his hair is his head his eyebrows his pubis like y'all really need to say that the weird thing is that wasn't used on bong that was just what was doing for real though this book is very like a good way to describe this book is perverted not like sexually perverted but like and really there's element like I think

the best elements of the new Jedi order are this way we're like we're taking the things that we know and that we expect and just turning them on their head.

Coruscant Jason there's like even that that scene where the girl is in the cavern like the cave monster it's like a giant throat it's very it's, the return of anakin in a way like whatever was really going on there it's just all very kind of gross in a way but not in a bad way like not not it's not really ever over the top or out of line with being in star wars it's just if it feels very dark but not in like a cheap way the

vong sometimes do where it's like oh he cut his eyebrows off because he was so epic and so sick, like part of the anakin stuff i couldn't take seriously because it just reminded me of like this theme scam like the the meme of like hey me your brother without any capital letters it's like it's just virgin fucking with jason by not capitalizing things to make him think he's this 16 year old just saying skibbity toilet over and over again.

Yeah it's you don't really ever know what's going on with anakin whether he

was a force ghost whether that was regere i think that's kind of interesting kind of like in episode nine with with uh kylo and and han and it's like it doesn't at the end it doesn't really matter how real it is because, if it's the forest it's the force if it's your internal monologue hey it's what you actually think anyway but if it's regere then it's kind of fucked up yeah like i i i think it does the answer to it does matter because like yes there's the whole thing of like what matters

here is jason's experience so in the end the experience is the experience and that just is what it is but if you look outside that box a little then it does like if if it's just vergier doing all these things to be as manipulative as possible where like ending the conversation saying like oh this must be what you think because if i'm just you i'm not anakin then you're saying it anyways like well if you're not just you if you're the fucking bird that's tortured me for a month then that's not

okay in bird skywalker in bird skywalker the biggest character of the njo.

But like i think the the best way that some of the philosophy gets across is with the like the example in that conversation like right after jason has escaped from this monster that's digesting all these things and there's like a colony of people that are living inside or not not a colony but a group of survivors that have taken up residence inside because they can eat in there there's stuff they can survive off of they just have to make a sacrifice to the monster so it stays

fed and so they've like tossed this girl and she was the last one in so she gets to be the first one eaten and jason rescues her they're not very happy about that and this is when jason like. He's just had a meeting with for a year in Naminor realizing that he's been kind of played or from his perspective with what he saw thinking he'd been played, you know, goes like super dark or slightenings tries to choke for a year with the force and with his fists,

that little bird neck gets here. Yeah. Yeah. And so when he's talking to Anakin, he says like, I, as good as killed them. Cause like, I didn't go super dark and kill them because the prior scene had like cut fade to dark. But he says the fact that he made that monster expel them and never want to eat a human again means that they have to survive outside of it. And now by saving her, he'd killed everyone else.

And like, I think highlighting the choices in that way of saying like they're not operating on perfect information. So or perfect options like there's not always the option to save everyone.

So sometimes killing one person can mean saving others and then you get the whole like, waving a lightsaber versus just choking someone out with the force is that really that much better i think that's where those arguments are at their strongest but it does end up being a little contrived a lot of the time yeah no i agree with all that i mean in this and again we see kind of the same thing with jana too where she has her own little quasi fall it's different but similar so I'm solo kids.

They just get to do whatever they want. Get it together. Maybe the Jedi shouldn't just be allowed to make whatever decisions they want and do whatever they want with all these people. Maybe they shouldn't. They need to get their Jedi license and do ongoing professional development and et cetera, et cetera. Sometimes gardeners are just dicks. That's really the moral of the story.

Pelion makes this exact choice earlier, and i think that's part of i don't know if stover had read that part by now i don't know if that had happened i can't remember if it's earlier on but i think it's in forceretic remnant or heretic when leia is going to see them i don't think it's from earlier yeah we haven't had that much empire yet well there's a couple scenes with them earlier but i just don't remember if leia had visited bastion yet because that's

when that happens and like part of what just associates that imagery being used so strongly with like okay this is kind of fucked up is that like you hear pelian saying the exact same way or same thing so it's like he's a white nationalist, yeah so he's from a different era it's okay if right if grandpa's racist yeah Yeah. Let him watch his Westerns fuck off. Don't say Western around him. He just goes off on a... He still calls him Twin Tails like said Twi'leks.

We're never going to change that. He likes them. It's just he doesn't know the proper terminology. He keeps calling Admiral Crefay fuzzy. Hey, Fuzz! You know, back in my day, you weren't allowed on a bridge, but I'm glad you're on one now. Drill drill baby drill exactly yeah anything else you want to say about traitor i feel like there's it's it's kind of a hard book to talk about because i think we've distilled the main kind of arguments.

Like what else happens what else you want to talk about for trader i mean the the biggest thing with trader to talk about is really the implications of whether and how it gets used or misused by troy denning later on and those are certainly discussions that we will continue like it's such an important book for how it can be used to justify some of those things accurately or inaccurately because clearly that's what happens like i don't think darth kydus happens necessarily without trader

happening the way it does i don't think that reflects necessarily.

An accurate retelling or an accurate interpretation of what trader was trying to do but i also think when traitor was diverging from some of what you'd expect star or some of what the prequels would show with the force and the jedi that i don't know that it's that surprising that it happens and i being on record as liking jason's overall arc like it's definitely something we'll have to talk about more but that doesn't mean i agree with all the individual

he'll be he'll be he'll be a good guy for a bit but he's so creepy in yeah in swarm or like in the darkness crisis the fact that there's bug orgies going on and jason's demeanor comes across as creepy as it does. Is yeah he's he becomes like the ultimate that boy ain't right after this point like he like he That boy ain't ever really right. Because after this, he kind of does his own thing and disappears during the Swarm War. He goes on his little sojourn, and then he becomes an authoritarian.

Like the throwing, having a kid into the mix and getting a force vision. Those have always freaked him out. And now it's about his kid. Like that's enough to that. That throws off. And that'll fuck you up. But what do you think about the 10% of Coruscant being dead thing as Camp have bringing up in the chat? I did think that was. Well, I thought it was weird how how. So is it implying that the usual long are shipping people off planet on purpose? Yes.

I always thought it was weird how quickly Coruscant is completely cleaned out like they're down in like the lower levels and like this is a time too where Coruscant has been depicted on screen, I mean but it's always been like cause Coruscant did like over the years I think it's kind of been scaled up a bit like back in, you know the Bantam era they talk about Coruscant it's a massive city of skyscrapers it's a city planet but you can still reach the bottom,

like there's one book I can't remember which one it is where Jason and Jaina do they're at the bottom and they run into this like I can't remember like a creature and. But it kind of gets scaled up more and more. And like the Coruscant of the like, you know, and or where they're 500 and 500 levels down and it's just a random maintenance shaft. And there's another 10,000 levels below or not 10,000, another 2000 levels below. I don't see how you wipe everybody out on that planet. Yeah.

It's more like they get kind of, they smooth out the top, build the jungle on that. And then the undersides are left a bit more intact.

And that's where everyone's hiding out because no one cared about them in the first place yeah but that also does make it like make somewhat more sense that it's not such a big impact on the planet's ability to exist afterwards so it can go either way yeah i will say it's fairly bold to take the one of the major locations of the prequels the senate building and decide to destroy it like we'll destroy it with like bad interior decorating but as we

learn it you can't actually destroy it yeah it's pretty it's a pretty tough bastard but the jedi temple is destroyed or it's in really rough shape yeah it's uh it it has to go through queller it had or not queller are you reading new rebellion now I'm sorry no waiting.

I've had to read so many individual parts of it for videos over the last while like some of it seems kind of base I'm sure we'll read it soon yeah but what's his fucking name Lord night Nairax Nairax Nairax that's the one so it's not having a great week, really no it's not I forgot I forgot retinax went there as well like i guess the other thing with jason is like he's always, his empathy has always been such a core part of his character and the thing that he's been struggling with

throughout the use on vong war is like he just doesn't know what to do, so this does encourage him to at least make a choice at some point but yeah because at the the very beginning he's he's same sort of thing philosopher doesn't want to fight yeah it doesn't it it makes him more willing to act but it doesn't really change, the core of like he thinks that both he doesn't know what to do but he's the only one with any idea on what to do in any situation it's just ramping both

of those elements up to 11 which is. It's not a healthy combination. What he needed was therapy. Yes, he didn't need angry birds tormenting him for a month. And without that therapy, I worry for the lad. Yeah, I'm worried about what, you know, he definitely needs a better health subscription at the very least, at the very least. Until they give us money, don't give him a call out. Or I mean, I still give him an audible call out like our sponsor.

Yeah, no, it's it's it's uh that that bit of nuance is fine because it's it has been a while you know there's so many books and one thing that i'm i am sort of impressed about as well is you mentioned how empathy has been an important part of his character they actually do a good job in these novels of keeping the characters pretty consistent with their earlier depictions which considering these were like often books made explicitly for children or kind of pulpy bantam era you know

novels it's pretty cool that they managed to keep the continuity there yeah you think we get every book we get at least one young jedi knight reference this book has several yeah i think star by even star by star does that really well yeah considering how much darkness trilogy kind of of yeah doesn't do that with a lot of the characters yeah it just it ramps up simp zack but we'll get there yeah uh yeah so you want to give a ranking or

a rating for trader yeah i think this is my favorite new new jedi order book i don't i don't know if i can give an s though.

For now, I'm going to give it an A. I really liked it. I really liked, I think the fact that it does not jump around, there's no bad B plot, is a really underrated aspect. I like the cutaways to like the very short cutaways to like something about the universe at large, or, you know, it gets very poetic about hyperspace. All that is great. But I don't think it's quite an S for me, but it is an A.

Yeah, I was more sure I would give it an S coming into it. Like, I feel like the amount that I've thought about it between the last time I read it and the amount and like now and how much it's probably going to remain a reference point for us in the future. I think I do have to give it an S. I don't know that I agree with everything it's doing, but I think it's really well structured. I think it's really well written.

I think it handles the characters really well. it's just whether or not i agree with the whether or not i understand and agree with the things that it's trying to say and whether they're slightly responsible for some of the bad parts that come with the rest of the timeline for the elements that do stick but i i think it is an s i think think it deserves an s okay so overall a very highly rated uh novel and i'm glad we read it so what are we doing next week now well first

i was going to do something unorthodox and oh great emails oh yeah yeah we have the best star wars joke sent in by clam burglar seven days ago and we'll try to work some of these back in over the next little while because it's been a while since we've been in the emails it was full of ads that i had to to clean out of the way.

Yeah, so this comes from Clam saying Palpatine was scrupulous in imposing humanocentric ideology on his new empire, only to realize his Grand Vizier was an alien, much to Palpatine's chagrin. It's like chagrin, but chagrin. Big blue fella. We had a question from Joel as well, which I don't think it's something we're going to answer right now because I think it'll deal more, but I'll just read it first.

Curiously, your thoughts on the idea that after the new Jedi order series was finished, a lot of the impact of the series was essentially ignored, save for perhaps a few character things, but things like Coruscant being completely wrecked and the impact of the volume of the galaxy as a whole seem to get washed away.

Many people speculate. This was the editors at Delray and Lucasfilm having cold feet on the era due to new Jedi orders, mixed reception, love to hear your thoughts, podcast rate as ever. So I think that's going to be more of a thing. We talk about getting into darkness and leaving unifying force.

But I mean, i'll just say i would agree with most of that we have talked about that in the past yeah where the yuzhan vong like they literally pull up and then they went off to another they don't leave the galaxy but they go and do their own thing and yeah well when there's when the series finishes itself with a load them all up on a planet and ship out then it's limiting itself a little bit but then there's like very explicitly we're

going to be fighting yuzhan long holdouts for years we're going to be dealing with coruscant's issues for years we're not going to be able to be back here definitely not going to see the major core of the government be here for a while then you open chapter one of the next book is like okay meanwhile in the jedi temple on coruscant the chief of state had the chiss ambassadors coming to meet the jedi kind of like okay well we're we're all back exactly where we were yeah so whether that's

a reception thing or something else. The need to always go back to something familiar so new readers can come in is kind of, the perennial problem with it. It's kind of the reality of writing for a movie tie-in series at the end of the day. Yep. Like it's hard to sell a, especially like when legacy of the force is coming out and you know, this, the, the prequels are still coming out. It's like, okay, but we've got the legends version or the book version of Darth Vader.

What the fuck is a huge on Vaughn? Oh, Oh, I've got to read 19 books. No, I'm probably okay. Yeah. So, you know. Just the reality of liking the things we like. But our final email, final question for the day comes from Adam, who asked, with season two of Tales confirmed, what's something you would like to see in it? So just maybe quickly pick an era you'd most like to see in, or a Jedi, a specific Jedi character that you want to get the adult treatment.

The adult treatment. For one, I would like it not to be prequel era again. I don't know if that's too much to ask. It is. I'm telling you right now it is. So it's got to be a prequel era Jedi. Probably because like it's not going to be exploring one of the members of Luke's new order right now. Unless they introduce a lot more with that or like even raise.

That's probably going to be at least one more season of prequels or outside chance of High Republic this is why I'm not that excited for it like I can't think of a Jedi I want to I need to watch a full Opo Rancisis. I guess get that snake up in you that's my answer yeah maybe like,

I don't even know maybe like make up a fucking Wookiee Jedi be cool, i mean i would love another i'd love another three ahsoka episodes justin your face doesn't seem to be doesn't seem to be saying that you would actually like the thing you just said no i wouldn't like that i want a full season of ahsoka but i don't want more tales of the jedi ahsoka i just i wanted i was hoping enough about the i know enough about her teenage years yeah,

I just want an anthology of stuff we wouldn't otherwise get to see. You know what I'd like? A solo Anakin episode. Or an Anakin Qui-Gon episode. Or an Anakin Obi-Wan. What if we find out Anakin did a second genocidal act when... Yeah, I might be a bit much. Qui-Gon. I'd like to see a Qui-Gon episode. Yeah. Go to that end of the Dooku spectrum. Yeah. I think seeing more Qui-Gon would always be welcome. Who else?

13 year old Qui-Gon but still voiced by Liam Neeson I wouldn't mind like a Kiedi Mundi episode, or a Kit Fisto episode like some of the big dogs what if we explore so this is you're gonna love this what if we take one of the council members and explore their relationship with a young Padawan say if you were to take like I don't know, Plo Koon and you were to look at his relationship with like Like, what if we get some time with him and Ahsoka?

Actually, now that I say that, I think it actually is what they're doing. That sounds extremely likely. I'm willing to put money on that, actually. Oh, fuck. All right.

Well, what do you want to do next week? I don't know. What are you thinking? Are we going to go forward with our Essential Legends collection plan and see how long, like, Night Errant is or something? Or do we want to try to jump into Destiny's Way? No, I need a week off from books. Okay. So, yeah. Is there a young reader series or a comic book series we should start now that we're done with Jedi Prince as those kind of interstitial episodes? Hmm.

Because I do have all of my Old Republic stuff still out as well. If we were to do that. Let's think on it. You guys can supply emails and maybe we'll tweet. Let's decide by... I'll put the episode out on Monday. I did it for the last one, but the next one on Monday as well. And you guys can send us emails. Maybe we'll have a decision by Tuesday. We'll tweet it out. All right. So any comic book, young reader series, I think we're going to keep it to that.

You know what? No, I changed my mind. Let's do the Boba Fett books, the Boba Fett books, the young readers. Yeah. All right. We'll be doing that. You're cool. Yeah, that's fine with me. So that'll be what we do next week. And then two weeks from now, destiny's way.

There it is. All right. thanks for watching everyone we're going to be live on x2 and dad's about to play on youtube actually i can press a button to not do that so i can talk a bit slower but we're going to be on x2 doing something youtube.com slash eckstoo hope to see some of you there otherwise talk to you next week do you want to do you want to say anything to everyone no i don't like these.