Talk:A Marine Went to Jedi Camp

Review
'''NOTE: there are spoilers in this review. Pirates, ye be warned.'''

This is yet another entry into Goodwood’s ongoing efforts to expand the KOTOR universe. This one was alright, but I think I liked his previous story better. In Part One, Laera’s training is glossed over&mdash;it’s certainly described with all interesting and relevant details, but it’s a lot of telling and not very much showing. I would’ve much rather seen this taking place; the scene where Vrook tells Laera to stop running and go meditate, the one where she was snarky with him and had to go study the Hundred Year Darkness, and the one where she had another vision while studying all would’ve made for great scenes not just to read about but to actually read. If the author ever revisits this work, I hope he expands it and dedicates more time to showing&mdash;not telling&mdash;Laera’s Jedi training.

Part Two felt pretty much the same. I felt like I was reading the cliff notes version of a story as opposed to an actual story. Take away some of the narrative fluff and a bit of play-by-pay, and a good deal of this could be categorized as reading a wiki article. I just feel like there’s so much potential in the events that you’re talking about, but none of it is realized. The story is telling us what happened instead of showing us what happened. Yes, that would make this a fair bit longer, but that shouldn’t be a deterrence either.

The story was also a bit disjointed. Maybe I missed or overlooked some pieces, but I don’t understand the rationale behind Laera’s desire to return to the military. Yes, obviously she’s a Marine and that’s in her blood, but I’m not really feeling her decision to leave her Jedi training and return to the Republic. She explained it, you told us what it was&mdash;the threat to the Republic&mdash;but, like I said unless I’m overlooking something, I’m not SEEING where she made that decision.

Revan’s proclamation to the Republic was underwhelming. This is a major moment in the overall KOTOR era storyline, and it seems to be glossed over. You talk a little about how Laera feels about it, but as far as the Jedi Masters go you only tell us that they were shocked and dismayed. Laera may have been the focus of the story, but this is Darth Revan declaring himself the Dark Lord of the Sith to the Republic. Considering we know how involved these Jedi Masters will be with Revan later on, I think it’s extremely important that we get more out of them than just being told they were shocked and dismayed.

I’m also a bit confused as the purpose of the final line. Why is she telling them “always loyal?” Is she assuring them that she won’t turn to the dark side? Is she assuring them that even though she’s going to the Marines again, she’ll still be faithful to the way of the Jedi? I’m having a hard time understanding the relevance.

Now let me tell you what I did like: with the exception of the underwhelming Revan scene, it was the actual scenes that you included. Not when you told us about things, but when you showed things; showed people dueling, showed people talking. I particularly enjoyed the scene where Laera and Vrook talk about Nomi Sunrider, who I assume is the Jedi Exile in your take on the story. If the whole story was actual scenes with people talking and people actually doing things as opposed to just hearing about it, then I would’ve enjoyed it much, much more.

So, to assign a score. Taking the way the story was presented out of the equation, you wrote this very well. You are a talented writer. I would give it a 4 out of 5 for technical merit. As for the actual narrative, though, I’ll give it two different scores. For what I think it could have been, a 2 out of 5. For what it was...I guess I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5. I really hope to see this story expanded upon in the future, because there’s just so much unrealized potential here. - Brandon Rhea  (talk) 04:18, June 3, 2010 (UTC)