Here is a thought I had about the concept of the "chosen one" in the SW saga. Obviously the word "one" is singular, and I've seen people debating whether it was Anakin or Luke or now even Rey. But is it possible that whenever the Force is unbalanced, a "chosen one" is used to bring balance? So rather than there only being one "chosen one" in the entire history of the galaxy, maybe there have been some before and will be some again in the future? I haven't kept up with the books that have been published post-Disney, so there may be something out there that says otherwise...
I don't know how Disney intends to play it out (if they ever do), but in the old canon it certainly seems that way. Every time the Jedi or Sith got too rigid and monk-like (or so power-mad they potentially could harm the Force in the case of the Sith) they always got smashed down to scattered survivors who stopped the monastic practices to rebuild the strength of their order.
In the case of the Jedi it usually took the form of an unusually powerful male hero falling to the dark side and betraying the order in some way (like Revan or Anakin) and leaves it a smashed shambles, but who usually ends up returning to the light shortly before death or disapearance. He is usually followed some years later by an unusually powerful female Jedi or Jedi convert who cleans up the last of the fallout from the betrayal and sets the order on a new path to recovery (like Meetra Surik or (presumably) Rey).
Disney seems to be following the same pattern more or less, the same way they have taken other parts of the EU and introduced a slightly changed version them.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
The Sequel trilogy evne more than the Prequel trilogy seems to make the force even more magical than it already was, with stuff like force teleportation of items and blowing up spaceships with the force. That is just not a level of power that I feel fits the original trilogy or its background. If Jedi blow up spaceships with their telekinetic or force lightning powers, how can Han be so ignorant to know nothing at all about any of that and not believe any of the stories surrounding the Jedi or the Force? Did Palpatine actually mind-wipe the entire galaxy and have a super-hacker available that could destroy any documentation about them?
As Darth Vader said to Tarkin "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force."
Then one of the other admirals acts like he thinks Vader's an impotent braggart as if he has no idea what Vader can do. So yeah, The Jedi and Sith were not in the habit of advertising what they could do to outsiders. 99.99% of the people in the galaxy had never SEEN a Force user in person. So they were running on hear say and legends.
The "power of the force" is not the same as "the power of an individual Jedi or Sith". The Death Star requires significant resources to build, thousands to millions people involved in its construction or operation. And the Death Star can still not attempt to read someone's emotions or manipulate his mind. The power of the force is far more encompassing. But that doesn't have to mean a single Jedi or Sith has to blow up planets, or even ships.
But ti's really a minor point. I can deal with it either way. The biggest problem is that it tends to be universe-breaking if you make your superpowers too strong - at some point, heroes are just too far removed from "reality" that you could relate ot them or could tell interesting story, because the rules are arbitrary and few writers manage to explain them or keep them consistent. (A problem we're far too familiar as Star Trek fans with all its technobable).
Which is also pretty much what happens with the final fight in this movie. Can anyone tell me what really allowed Rey and Ben to beat the Emperor?
The story at the end of The Return of the Jedi is really easy to relate to and understand. Giving into the dark side means the Emperor wins. That's a rule that we can understand, and kinda related to - if we give into our anger, the people that angered us win, though usually we just mean that metaphorically, it is not necessarily literally true. Why did the Emperor lose? Because Vader loved his long-lost child, he didn't want to see him killed, and the only way to stop it was to act now. So he did, and the Emperor did not see that coming. And it was a very physical act that this turn represented, not some magic swelling of force powers, it was literally Vader throwing himself at the Emperor and throwing him down a deep pit. We can see how that could kill someone (but also a good example of the limits of the power of an individual force user - despite all his power, Palpatine couldn't catch his fall apparently.) )
I pretty much agree with you on almost all accounts, safe for I don't mind the force being made more magical - as long as nobody ever mentions "midichlorians" ever again, I'm happy
I guess magical might be the wrong word - the force should be magic, but it is too powerful and arbitrary in my opinion. If you can blow up ships, you can also easily blow up people. It leads to all kinds of inconsistencies. If you can stop a dozens of tons heavy shuttle from leaving the gravity well of a planet, think what you can do with a single person.
In my current Star Wars campaign (that treats only the original trilogy as gospel and steals stuff from the rest), midichlorians were an attempt at explaining the force that was popular for some time, until new research showed it was wrong. But testing for midichlorians could still be useful, because many force users actually had midichlorians in them, but that might merely be because they are attracted to force-sensitive people and basically replace regular mitochondria, slightly altering the biochemistry by benefiting from the force-connection. Their origin seems to be on Coruscant, with a long tradition of Jedi Academies there, a large percentage of Jedi ended up with midichlorians, explaining why they were a popular theory originally. The real origin of the force powers is still mysterious.
I think I'll personally go with the approach that the force picks people that are likely to be present at important junctures in history, which is why it often also seems to be strong in particular families - being born into a family of important people can make it more likely you're at important junctures again. But there are no guarantees. (And the Old Republic's Jedi Order rules against marriage might have been instituted to combat this effect, so no Jedi dynasties could form)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
My headcanon is that Qui-Gon either used Midichlorians to explain the force to a child or it was indeed some flat-earther thing he believed in at the time. But since they are never eber brought up again I think they can be forgotten 😃
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
My headcanon is that Qui-Gon either used Midichlorians to explain the force to a child or it was indeed some flat-earther thing he believed in at the time. But since they are never eber brought up again I think they can be forgotten 😃
I always believed that midicholorians were just used as a way to detect Force Sensitives. There has to be some way for Jedi to take a bunch of Force Sensitive children and force them into Jedi. However, Qui-Gon seems to think that they are used to connect Force Sensitives with the Force. It sounds like Jedi follow the will of the Force by speaking to midicholorians while the Sith do not since some Sith want to control the Force.
I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected I would, it was better than it had any right to be. But I wouldn't call it good or even satisfying.
<snip for length>
Pretty much describes my reaction (and for the record @mustrumridcully0, the term in English was indeed "Final Order"). It was a decent popcorn flick but it was worse than the prequel films: it made about as much sense as Star Trek Into Darkness.
At this point I'm kind of used to Star Wars militaries having no sense of battlefield tactics whatsoever, but why the hell is Threepio for some stupid reason programmed to be able to translate ancient Sith, and then not tell you what he translated? And do they not have any hackers in the Resistance at all?
And yeah, Palpatine back from the dead was a dumb idea when Dark Empire did it and it's even dumber with J.J. Abrams at the helm. And we don't even get to see this transmission he supposedly sent?
And I still liked Rey the Nobody from Nowhere better than Rey Palpatine.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
The Sequel trilogy evne more than the Prequel trilogy seems to make the force even more magical than it already was, with stuff like force teleportation of items and blowing up spaceships with the force. That is just not a level of power that I feel fits the original trilogy or its background. If Jedi blow up spaceships with their telekinetic or force lightning powers, how can Han be so ignorant to know nothing at all about any of that and not believe any of the stories surrounding the Jedi or the Force? Did Palpatine actually mind-wipe the entire galaxy and have a super-hacker available that could destroy any documentation about them?
In our own galaxy there are approximately 100 billion stars, and we're learning that planets are extremely common, though Earthlike planets do not appear to be. In Star Wars, however, worlds that are at least mildly habitable seem to be quite common (even ones like Tatooine which somehow retains enough oxygen to be life-bearing), so the galaxy must have many trillions if not quadrillions of inhabitants.
But for all those untold gazillions of people, at the time of the prequels, there were only about 10,000 active Jedi, and only two Sith at any given time. The era of open Jedi-Sith wars was many thousands of years earlier, and most species don't live as long as Yoda (and in Legends, even Yoda was younger than the last Sith War, which ended in 1000 BBY).
So even when the Jedi Order was an active force in the galaxy, most people lived their whole lives without ever meeting one. And we know from the prequels they tended to live apart from the larger galaxy anyway (the whole monasticism thing). And with the schizophrenic tech base of Star Wars, it's easy enough for people in backwaters of the galaxy to miss any journalism on them and just think the whole thing is spacers telling tall tales over too much synthale and spice.
There's also some other things going on:
The idea that land areas can become strong with the Force goes back to the cave in The Empire Strikes Back. It's not a stretch to believe that Force powers can become stronger in such an area. The Force ghosts interacted with the normal world in the vicinity of an ancient Jedi temple, and Palpatine did his mega-Force lightning while standing in an ancient Sith temple.
Additionally, most of our interaction with Force-sensitives is with the Jedi, who as a rule do not use the Force as an offensive weapon (at least not against living opponents: mechu macture arts have been a thing for quite a while). Think about it: if you're using the Force as a lethal weapon against living opponents, you're using an energy symbiotic with life itself to destroy life. Ergo, the Jedi favor the lightsaber over offensive use of the Force to protect the Force from the Jedi themselves.
There's also the fact that grand Force works seem to require a lot of concentration, so it's not something a Jedi can really do while under fire. And not being Sith, they're not likely to want or need to when they aren't. And again, nobody was shooting at Rey when she grabbed the transport, and then when Kylo tried to counter her, she lost her temper and drew on the dark side for an instant. Denying the temptation once doesn't mean it goes away forever.
So yeah, that part of the film, I don't have a problem with.
The item teleportation I'm pretty sure was meant to be specific to Rey and Kylo's Force bond, not something that is normally possible.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
And I still liked Rey the Nobody from Nowhere better than Rey Palpatine.
It just raises the question of why Jedi are not supposed to marry or at least institute a breeding program of creating more powerful Jedi. The only reason that makes sense is The Old Republic was controlling the Jedi. Without a Jedi lineage, certain families like the Skywalkers will not grow too powerful for the Jedi Council. Taking Force Sensitive children from their parents at an early age and raising them to be good little Jedi means the Old Republic can control them easier. After all, it is usually not a good idea for Force Sensitives to undergo temper tantrums.
With the Sith, they let the universe corrupt their disciples even if sometimes they subtly manipulate events to get their desired apprentice. It would be interesting to see if Palpatine intended to make Anakin weaker and easier to control by becoming Vader with his life support suit rather than just turning Anakin to the Dark Side. If Anakin didn't turn into a cyborg, then it would be easier for Anakin to follow the Rule of Two by disposing of Sidious and obtaining a new apprentice.
even without losing to obi-wan, anakin still likely would've lost if he tried to take out palpatine - because powerful or not, he has no control at all over the dark side, which palpatine has in abundance and has had for decades; he has in fact been described as the embodiment of the dark side many times, both in-universe and by various fans
this clip goes further into detail about this, and this guy is fairly well-known for being analytical about such things, unlike most fans who tend to be biased one way or the other or frequently tend to cherry-pick
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
he wouldn't have - palpatine wiped out 3 jedi masters in less than half a minute (even though the first two just stood there like giant derps and let themselves get stabbed for some reason) and managed to hold off both windu and later on yoda, the strongest jedi remaining on the council - no offense to obi-wan, but he doesn't hold a candle to mace windu, let alone yoda
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
even without losing to obi-wan, anakin still likely would've lost if he tried to take out palpatine - because powerful or not, he has no control at all over the dark side, which palpatine has in abundance and has had for decades; he has in fact been described as the embodiment of the dark side many times, both in-universe and by various fans
this clip goes further into detail about this, and this guy is fairly well-known for being analytical about such things, unlike most fans who tend to be biased one way or the other or frequently tend to cherry-pick
Obviously Anakin would have likely lost if he tried to take out Palpatine right after he defeated Kenobi, but the Empire would not have lasted long if Anakin became Emperor or Anakin might have bided his time and became Emperor after learning what he can from Palpatine like a true Sith. So it would be Emperor Anakin in A New Hope rather than Emperor Palpatine. Even if Palpatine defeated Anakin, then is is far more likely that he would give Anakin a harsh lesson to remember since that is what Sith Masters due to their apprentices.
However, my point was did Palpatine manipulate events so Anakin became a cyborg so Vader would be easier to control?
i seriously doubt he expected anakin to lose...or at least lose in the manner he did, so he likely didn't engineer it - but he was certainly quick to take advantage of it anyway; that's what manipulators do
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
i seriously doubt he expected anakin to lose...or at least lose in the manner he did, so he likely didn't engineer it - but he was certainly quick to take advantage of it anyway; that's what manipulators do
It was more likely, either Anakin was injured enough that Sidious could make him easier to control, he would have to find another apprentice, or one of the greatest Jedi was defeated. Either way Sidious would win. The only way for Sidious to lose was for Anakin to finally come to his senses and Darth Revan showing up to save the day had a far better chance of happening.
Honestly, Palpatine had already broken the Rule of Two. The argument of the Sith is that each apprentice becomes stronger than the master and takes them out, so each successive master is therefore stronger than the last.
The reality is, knowledge will be lost with every succeeding generation, because the dark side is inherently corruptive and therefore the Sith won't hold to that ideal Darth Bane set them. The apprentice can't be sure they've learned everything they can when they challenge and kill the master, and the master is not only always looking for a better apprentice (which means starting the whole process over), but also has a vested interest in not teaching the apprentice everything they know in order to preserve their own life.
They got lucky with Palpatine, who proved to just be that good and managed in only a handful of decades to do what multiple thousands of years of Sith failed to: destroy the Jedi Order utterly. But Palpatine, while effective, was also a controlling megalomaniac with a complexity addiction, and look who he picked as his apprentices:
Darth Maul, who is a good Jedi-killer but not much of a grand thinker.
Count Dooku, "Darth Tyranus", who is almost twenty years older than Palpatine already and likely to predecease him from natural causes.
My conclusion is that Palpatine intended to rule for however long he could extend his life and didn't want an apprentice who could actually be a threat to him.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
i would say establishing an entire criminal collective strong enough to rival the black sun - and even managed to secure their allegiance - in less than a few weeks is indicative of grand thinking - and the only reason it failed was they moved too fast and attracted palpatine's attention
maul was also apparently the mastermind behind that whole pirate group in Solo, and he seems to have learned from his mistakes with the shadow collective, since no one even knew about him being behind the whole thing aside from that one woman, qi'ra or whatever her name was
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Going by how Obi-wan fights when he is not acting as Qui-Gon's sidekick he is a tank. He uses Sorescu which is a tanking style and he tends to defend and deflect a lot instead of putting a lot of effort into attack, wearing down foes until they get tired or impatient and make a mistake, so he would probably last longer than most knights of his power level.
Unfortunately, that would only delay things slightly since he does not seem to have the level of power to do much against Sidious offensively and the emperor has way too much patience to make a rash move and has more than enough strength in the force to wait out Kenobi instead of the other way around (if he did not just smash through Obi-wan's defenses in the first place).
i would say establishing an entire criminal collective strong enough to rival the black sun - and even managed to secure their allegiance - in less than a few weeks is indicative of grand thinking - and the only reason it failed was they moved too fast and attracted palpatine's attention
maul was also apparently the mastermind behind that whole pirate group in Solo, and he seems to have learned from his mistakes with the shadow collective, since no one even knew about him being behind the whole thing aside from that one woman, qi'ra or whatever her name was
I honestly don't care that the crappy cartoon brought Darth Maul back from the dead because fanservice. He got chopped in half at the waist and thrown down a reactor shaft. That's significant damage or total loss of multiple vital organs. You don't come back from that without massive, immediate medical attention. He's dead.
Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole have wiped better stories than that off their butts while p**s-drunk (and to be honest, the same goes for Rise of Skywalker). Just goes to show once again that canonicity is not an indicator of quality.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
i honestly don't give a rat's TRIBBLE about your OPINION - it's canon, he's back, get the TRIBBLE over it
It actually makes no difference whether he is back or not, the point is that while he was Sidious's apprentice he was a competent tracker and deadly fighter but not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed or he would not have stopped to gloat which gave Kenobi the chance to kill him.
Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole have wiped better stories than that off their butts while p**s-drunk (and to be honest, the same goes for Rise of Skywalker). Just goes to show once again that canonicity is not an indicator of quality.
This is my main problem with Disney wiping out the EU. They removed Heir to the Empire trilogy or as it is commonly known, the Thrawn trilogy which is far better than any of the Star Wars sequel movies. I am still annoyed that Disney did not bring back Mara Jade.
i honestly don't give a rat's TRIBBLE about your OPINION - it's canon, he's back, get the TRIBBLE over it
It actually makes no difference whether he is back or not, the point is that while he was Sidious's apprentice he was a competent tracker and deadly fighter but not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed or he would not have stopped to gloat which gave Kenobi the chance to kill him.
Clone wars did a lot more than bring him back with cybernetic legs. It revealed he wasn't Human, or originally a SITH!
He's from Dathomir, a rather interesting place ruled by groups called the Nightsisters and Nightbrothers. These groups are Force users, and lean towards the Dark Side, but aren't Sith. So Maul has a bunch of weird powers most Sith don't know because his first teacher was his MOTHER, one of the "witches" of Dathomir.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
i honestly don't give a rat's TRIBBLE about your OPINION - it's canon, he's back, get the TRIBBLE over it
It actually makes no difference whether he is back or not, the point is that while he was Sidious's apprentice he was a competent tracker and deadly fighter but not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed or he would not have stopped to gloat which gave Kenobi the chance to kill him.
Clone wars did a lot more than bring him back with cybernetic legs. It revealed he wasn't Human, or originally a SITH!
He's from Dathomir, a rather interesting place ruled by groups called the Nightsisters and Nightbrothers. These groups are Force users, and lean towards the Dark Side, but aren't Sith. So Maul has a bunch of weird powers most Sith don't know because his first teacher was his MOTHER, one of the "witches" of Dathomir.
True, he does have an interesting background. It reinforces the minion observation though, Dathomirian males are selected for that training based on their combat prowess, not their brains. It is expected that they leave the thinking to the Nightsisters and they are trained for obedience and controlled agression.
The Nightsister sect that Mother Talzin lead was especially interesting in that while Talzin herself often spouted off about evil and the dark side (and they were not the most pleasent of people on top of it) they actually called most often on the powers of the Winged Goddess, who the Jedi knew as The Daughter, the embodiment of the light side of the Force. In fact, the Winged Goddess's green "spirit ichor" they condensed out of the force and used for alchemy shows that alchemy itself is not exclusively bound to the dark side the way the Sith and Jedi believe it is.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
and she also suffered from lucas-hate...yeah, he apparently didn't like mara jade for some reason
i don't know if that had anything to do with why she hasn't been recanonized or if the disney crew overseeing star wars just didn't think she'd fit their universe around that time period...or, maybe she'll still show up in the future - just obviously not involved with luke in any way
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Actually, she technically has been re-canonized: Disney has her at Galaxy's Edge, which is apparently considered part of canon where actual story elements are concerned.
The problem is what to actually do with her in the new canon. She only had a couple actual character arcs:
Resolving the geas to "KILL LUKE SKYWALKER" that Palpy put on her as he died (Thrawn trilogy)
Jedi training and romance with Luke (Hand of Thrawn)
Being infected with a Yuuzhan Vong bioweapon and then getting pregnant (first 2/3 of New Jedi Order)
If indeed Mark Hamill was playing Sequel!Luke as celibate, two of those go out the window, and the third one kind of conflicts with the whole "Undead Palpatine *gag, puke* manipulating everything from the shadows" plot.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
To what end? I mean, everyone complains that Rey was a 'Mary-Sue'.
I personally think most of the time a character gets called that is because the person saying it doesn't like the character and can't be bothered to explain why. One of the more ridiculous is calling a character "hypercompetent"... which is a fancy way of saying you think they're too skilled at something... often for nonsensical reasons.
Comments
I don't know how Disney intends to play it out (if they ever do), but in the old canon it certainly seems that way. Every time the Jedi or Sith got too rigid and monk-like (or so power-mad they potentially could harm the Force in the case of the Sith) they always got smashed down to scattered survivors who stopped the monastic practices to rebuild the strength of their order.
In the case of the Jedi it usually took the form of an unusually powerful male hero falling to the dark side and betraying the order in some way (like Revan or Anakin) and leaves it a smashed shambles, but who usually ends up returning to the light shortly before death or disapearance. He is usually followed some years later by an unusually powerful female Jedi or Jedi convert who cleans up the last of the fallout from the betrayal and sets the order on a new path to recovery (like Meetra Surik or (presumably) Rey).
Disney seems to be following the same pattern more or less, the same way they have taken other parts of the EU and introduced a slightly changed version them.
My character Tsin'xing
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
But ti's really a minor point. I can deal with it either way. The biggest problem is that it tends to be universe-breaking if you make your superpowers too strong - at some point, heroes are just too far removed from "reality" that you could relate ot them or could tell interesting story, because the rules are arbitrary and few writers manage to explain them or keep them consistent. (A problem we're far too familiar as Star Trek fans with all its technobable).
Which is also pretty much what happens with the final fight in this movie. Can anyone tell me what really allowed Rey and Ben to beat the Emperor?
The story at the end of The Return of the Jedi is really easy to relate to and understand. Giving into the dark side means the Emperor wins. That's a rule that we can understand, and kinda related to - if we give into our anger, the people that angered us win, though usually we just mean that metaphorically, it is not necessarily literally true. Why did the Emperor lose? Because Vader loved his long-lost child, he didn't want to see him killed, and the only way to stop it was to act now. So he did, and the Emperor did not see that coming. And it was a very physical act that this turn represented, not some magic swelling of force powers, it was literally Vader throwing himself at the Emperor and throwing him down a deep pit. We can see how that could kill someone (but also a good example of the limits of the power of an individual force user - despite all his power, Palpatine couldn't catch his fall apparently.) )
I guess magical might be the wrong word - the force should be magic, but it is too powerful and arbitrary in my opinion. If you can blow up ships, you can also easily blow up people. It leads to all kinds of inconsistencies. If you can stop a dozens of tons heavy shuttle from leaving the gravity well of a planet, think what you can do with a single person.
In my current Star Wars campaign (that treats only the original trilogy as gospel and steals stuff from the rest), midichlorians were an attempt at explaining the force that was popular for some time, until new research showed it was wrong. But testing for midichlorians could still be useful, because many force users actually had midichlorians in them, but that might merely be because they are attracted to force-sensitive people and basically replace regular mitochondria, slightly altering the biochemistry by benefiting from the force-connection. Their origin seems to be on Coruscant, with a long tradition of Jedi Academies there, a large percentage of Jedi ended up with midichlorians, explaining why they were a popular theory originally. The real origin of the force powers is still mysterious.
I think I'll personally go with the approach that the force picks people that are likely to be present at important junctures in history, which is why it often also seems to be strong in particular families - being born into a family of important people can make it more likely you're at important junctures again. But there are no guarantees. (And the Old Republic's Jedi Order rules against marriage might have been instituted to combat this effect, so no Jedi dynasties could form)
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I always believed that midicholorians were just used as a way to detect Force Sensitives. There has to be some way for Jedi to take a bunch of Force Sensitive children and force them into Jedi. However, Qui-Gon seems to think that they are used to connect Force Sensitives with the Force. It sounds like Jedi follow the will of the Force by speaking to midicholorians while the Sith do not since some Sith want to control the Force.
Pretty much describes my reaction (and for the record @mustrumridcully0, the term in English was indeed "Final Order"). It was a decent popcorn flick but it was worse than the prequel films: it made about as much sense as Star Trek Into Darkness.
At this point I'm kind of used to Star Wars militaries having no sense of battlefield tactics whatsoever, but why the hell is Threepio for some stupid reason programmed to be able to translate ancient Sith, and then not tell you what he translated? And do they not have any hackers in the Resistance at all?
And yeah, Palpatine back from the dead was a dumb idea when Dark Empire did it and it's even dumber with J.J. Abrams at the helm. And we don't even get to see this transmission he supposedly sent?
And I still liked Rey the Nobody from Nowhere better than Rey Palpatine.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
In our own galaxy there are approximately 100 billion stars, and we're learning that planets are extremely common, though Earthlike planets do not appear to be. In Star Wars, however, worlds that are at least mildly habitable seem to be quite common (even ones like Tatooine which somehow retains enough oxygen to be life-bearing), so the galaxy must have many trillions if not quadrillions of inhabitants.
But for all those untold gazillions of people, at the time of the prequels, there were only about 10,000 active Jedi, and only two Sith at any given time. The era of open Jedi-Sith wars was many thousands of years earlier, and most species don't live as long as Yoda (and in Legends, even Yoda was younger than the last Sith War, which ended in 1000 BBY).
So even when the Jedi Order was an active force in the galaxy, most people lived their whole lives without ever meeting one. And we know from the prequels they tended to live apart from the larger galaxy anyway (the whole monasticism thing). And with the schizophrenic tech base of Star Wars, it's easy enough for people in backwaters of the galaxy to miss any journalism on them and just think the whole thing is spacers telling tall tales over too much synthale and spice.
There's also some other things going on:
Additionally, most of our interaction with Force-sensitives is with the Jedi, who as a rule do not use the Force as an offensive weapon (at least not against living opponents: mechu macture arts have been a thing for quite a while). Think about it: if you're using the Force as a lethal weapon against living opponents, you're using an energy symbiotic with life itself to destroy life. Ergo, the Jedi favor the lightsaber over offensive use of the Force to protect the Force from the Jedi themselves.
There's also the fact that grand Force works seem to require a lot of concentration, so it's not something a Jedi can really do while under fire. And not being Sith, they're not likely to want or need to when they aren't. And again, nobody was shooting at Rey when she grabbed the transport, and then when Kylo tried to counter her, she lost her temper and drew on the dark side for an instant. Denying the temptation once doesn't mean it goes away forever.
So yeah, that part of the film, I don't have a problem with.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
It just raises the question of why Jedi are not supposed to marry or at least institute a breeding program of creating more powerful Jedi. The only reason that makes sense is The Old Republic was controlling the Jedi. Without a Jedi lineage, certain families like the Skywalkers will not grow too powerful for the Jedi Council. Taking Force Sensitive children from their parents at an early age and raising them to be good little Jedi means the Old Republic can control them easier. After all, it is usually not a good idea for Force Sensitives to undergo temper tantrums.
With the Sith, they let the universe corrupt their disciples even if sometimes they subtly manipulate events to get their desired apprentice. It would be interesting to see if Palpatine intended to make Anakin weaker and easier to control by becoming Vader with his life support suit rather than just turning Anakin to the Dark Side. If Anakin didn't turn into a cyborg, then it would be easier for Anakin to follow the Rule of Two by disposing of Sidious and obtaining a new apprentice.
this clip goes further into detail about this, and this guy is fairly well-known for being analytical about such things, unlike most fans who tend to be biased one way or the other or frequently tend to cherry-pick
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Obviously Anakin would have likely lost if he tried to take out Palpatine right after he defeated Kenobi, but the Empire would not have lasted long if Anakin became Emperor or Anakin might have bided his time and became Emperor after learning what he can from Palpatine like a true Sith. So it would be Emperor Anakin in A New Hope rather than Emperor Palpatine. Even if Palpatine defeated Anakin, then is is far more likely that he would give Anakin a harsh lesson to remember since that is what Sith Masters due to their apprentices.
However, my point was did Palpatine manipulate events so Anakin became a cyborg so Vader would be easier to control?
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
It was more likely, either Anakin was injured enough that Sidious could make him easier to control, he would have to find another apprentice, or one of the greatest Jedi was defeated. Either way Sidious would win. The only way for Sidious to lose was for Anakin to finally come to his senses and Darth Revan showing up to save the day had a far better chance of happening.
The reality is, knowledge will be lost with every succeeding generation, because the dark side is inherently corruptive and therefore the Sith won't hold to that ideal Darth Bane set them. The apprentice can't be sure they've learned everything they can when they challenge and kill the master, and the master is not only always looking for a better apprentice (which means starting the whole process over), but also has a vested interest in not teaching the apprentice everything they know in order to preserve their own life.
They got lucky with Palpatine, who proved to just be that good and managed in only a handful of decades to do what multiple thousands of years of Sith failed to: destroy the Jedi Order utterly. But Palpatine, while effective, was also a controlling megalomaniac with a complexity addiction, and look who he picked as his apprentices:
My conclusion is that Palpatine intended to rule for however long he could extend his life and didn't want an apprentice who could actually be a threat to him.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
maul was also apparently the mastermind behind that whole pirate group in Solo, and he seems to have learned from his mistakes with the shadow collective, since no one even knew about him being behind the whole thing aside from that one woman, qi'ra or whatever her name was
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Unfortunately, that would only delay things slightly since he does not seem to have the level of power to do much against Sidious offensively and the emperor has way too much patience to make a rash move and has more than enough strength in the force to wait out Kenobi instead of the other way around (if he did not just smash through Obi-wan's defenses in the first place).
I honestly don't care that the crappy cartoon brought Darth Maul back from the dead because fanservice. He got chopped in half at the waist and thrown down a reactor shaft. That's significant damage or total loss of multiple vital organs. You don't come back from that without massive, immediate medical attention. He's dead.
Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole have wiped better stories than that off their butts while p**s-drunk (and to be honest, the same goes for Rise of Skywalker). Just goes to show once again that canonicity is not an indicator of quality.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
It actually makes no difference whether he is back or not, the point is that while he was Sidious's apprentice he was a competent tracker and deadly fighter but not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed or he would not have stopped to gloat which gave Kenobi the chance to kill him.
This is my main problem with Disney wiping out the EU. They removed Heir to the Empire trilogy or as it is commonly known, the Thrawn trilogy which is far better than any of the Star Wars sequel movies. I am still annoyed that Disney did not bring back Mara Jade.
He's from Dathomir, a rather interesting place ruled by groups called the Nightsisters and Nightbrothers. These groups are Force users, and lean towards the Dark Side, but aren't Sith. So Maul has a bunch of weird powers most Sith don't know because his first teacher was his MOTHER, one of the "witches" of Dathomir.
My character Tsin'xing
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
True, he does have an interesting background. It reinforces the minion observation though, Dathomirian males are selected for that training based on their combat prowess, not their brains. It is expected that they leave the thinking to the Nightsisters and they are trained for obedience and controlled agression.
The Nightsister sect that Mother Talzin lead was especially interesting in that while Talzin herself often spouted off about evil and the dark side (and they were not the most pleasent of people on top of it) they actually called most often on the powers of the Winged Goddess, who the Jedi knew as The Daughter, the embodiment of the light side of the Force. In fact, the Winged Goddess's green "spirit ichor" they condensed out of the force and used for alchemy shows that alchemy itself is not exclusively bound to the dark side the way the Sith and Jedi believe it is.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
My character Tsin'xing
i don't know if that had anything to do with why she hasn't been recanonized or if the disney crew overseeing star wars just didn't think she'd fit their universe around that time period...or, maybe she'll still show up in the future - just obviously not involved with luke in any way
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
The problem is what to actually do with her in the new canon. She only had a couple actual character arcs:
If indeed Mark Hamill was playing Sequel!Luke as celibate, two of those go out the window, and the third one kind of conflicts with the whole "Undead Palpatine *gag, puke* manipulating everything from the shadows" plot.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
My character Tsin'xing