SPOILER "Aftermath: Empire's End" By Chuck Wendig (Discussion)

What exactly is a Vantillian catamaran and is it important?

 

Lobot, we're home.

Bones, I nearly cried when he bit it. I was really hoping to see him in the next animated series after Rebels.

Sloane one of the best SW characters ever and so glad it was her that got to beat Rax.

Loved Taris getting another appearance. They're seeding for KoTOR references - Snoke's Rakata connection IMO.

Dengar! Yes!

All the interludes getting a kind of conclusion but leaving things open for further stories. I want more of the Acolytes and Cobb Vanth.

Nima the Hutt - loved that she was different to other Hutts had some sinister mystical blast going on with the Proto-Huttese and the weird slaves.

Hux and Phasma. Great to see their origins. I want more, more, more of what happens in the unknown regions over the next 30 years.

Thrawn's mention. Is he dead? Is he out in the unknown regions, is he on the Eclipse?

Is Snoke on the Eclipse or do they find him later?

I loved this book. In a very real way it connected the beginnings of the First Order to the end of the Empire which now makes TFA a lot richer to me.

 

i think i am recovered sufficiently to attempt to make more reasonable observations about this book now without just flailing.

i think what hit me hardest was the theme of how children are shaped by their influences and environment. this passage with Rax demonstrates his resentment toward his upbringing. you can see how his corrupted thinking leads him to perpetuate this cycle of abuse perhaps without even realizing it.


he also talks again about destiny and how he was driven by this (perhaps innate) belief that he was meant for something else, something greater. the truth is he was meant to be loved and guided and protected but he was none of those things and so his whole idea of what is right has been utterly corrupted. to the point that when he meets a terrorized little Armitage Hux, he sets him on a megalomaniac path: Hux isn't there to serve, he's there to rule. heady stuff for a 5 year-old.

in an interesting parallel, we have Temmin looking longingly at Leia's cradle:



yeah, it's a bit on the nose, but what struck me is again, that sense of yearning for wholeness: Temmin hasn't grown up to be a monster, but he longs for a complete and unified and loving family, which he feels the lack in some way. despite being loved by Norra and Brentin, despite their trying to do best by him. fortunately Snap eventually reconciles with his mother, makes his peace (in some small fashion) with his father, and is adopted into the Alliance as his family (Wedge, etc.). he finds the support he needs and the guiding hand he craves.

throughout the book we see children who are abandoned, orphaned, banding together for lack of any stable family. some of them seem to be making it in their tribes because they have the surrogacy and positive reinforcement they need. others do not and you can see they're bound for darkness as a result.

all of which has implications for Ben Solo who is just barely born into this galaxy, who we know will have a very rough time of it with his own family, his own ideas of destiny, and his own reckoning.

discounting Anakin, we've never delved this deep into the psychology of the characters at-large in Star Wars. bad guys were just bad guys. they were never children who had hopes and dreams, who were poisoned by the effects of war. Rax was a survivor; he held a place of privilege in the Empire, but he never stopped being that angry little boy who turned to selling other children to get by in the world. everything he does is an act of vengeance because he never got justice for himself.

seriously grim stuff. i can't even look at Hux and Phasma and the whole of the FO the same way anymore.

 

I wondered if it was both a water and air ship, what it looked like and everything. Looking at other Star Wars ships to imagine what it was like, I know maybe I need to get away from the Star Wars for a bit. Every time a new ship is described, I want to imagine what it is.

 

I also loved the slave rebellion on Tatooine Interlude. I found it to be a nice nod to Episode I.

 

Or does it make Finn that much more improbable, seemingly having no personality "quirks" that would have been instilled in him his whole life? He comes across as a giddy teenager to me, not someone who has lived his whole life in an unnatural and single-minded society.

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 26, 2017, Original Post Date: Feb 26, 2017 ---

I'm beginning to lose hope for any complexity or depth to this trilogy. It seems they may tryi to keep it simple and vague.

 

Of course it's easy to judge if we just cut out some single pieces of someone's life. I refuse ideas about people that are born to harm others without any reason. Most of them have their back-story. Not everyone's life consists of loving parents from day 0. Why should it be different in a GFFA?
Often it's pure luck to have a "good ghost", someone to trust, during childhood and youth, who provides the right amount of guidance and good energy to reach your personal "stable island" in rough waters.

But I know that's boring .
We want heroines and heroes to love and villians to hate; easy and less complex..
Even if this is not how the Force works.
#Save (you know whom )

 

no, it's not how the Force works ~ hahaha! or life.

in a way, the PT was an interesting forerunner ~ it tried to show us how Anakin was this aspirational kid who went down the wrong path.
it doesn't entirely work because of all the reasons people have discussed ad nauseum, but it's interesting to see the ST (or at least Wendig) pick up that thread and do something powerful with it.

i never felt bad about Hux before--always just assumed he was from birth a privileged little Imperial brat who was handed a star destroyer.
yeah, he was handed a star destroyer, all right, but how he got it is kind of harrowing once you start to really consider the larger picture.
and if i was honest with myself, i guess it was always there, but until it was made manifest in the book, i just dismissed it.

 

I once tried to establish a very serious thread about Ren and Hux https://thecantina.starwarsnewsnet....ish-misguided-bad-guys-like-kylo-or-hux.9333/

 

you did!

and i wrote there:

i'm glad to see at least i was willing to think he could be put to use somehow. hahahaha

 

Hahaha. Yep. Hard charity work on a backwater planet for Hux. How about bird nursing on Ach-To?

Sorry for this little trip off-topic..

 

or maybe a cat sanctuary. ; D

 

You've seen one film of the trilogy. Look at the OT. ANH lacked complexity. Complexity came with TESB. If you have ever seen a Rian Johnson film you'll know he doesn't do simple and vague.

Furthermore, how do you explain people who grew up in Stalinist societies, fascist societies, theocratic societies IRL who end up rebelling? How do you explain North Korean defectors? I think that has to be the closest analogy to the FO.

 

i still hope we get to see this play out somehow. i want Luke's wisdom and compassion to be the rule of the day.

 

So, when do you guys think we can expect the next book series? What do you think it's going to be about? Will Luke actually show up? How will Sloane meet her end? Who is on the Eclipse? When will Snoke enter the picture? What happens to all the other kid's in the Hux Brigade?

 

It could be about Luke and Ben sort of the Legends books about anakin and onion-wan