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there’s also a non zero chance George saw someone refer to SW as fantasy, disagreed and dialled up the scifi with some blood testing
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Jan 24, 2024 23:36
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The Jedi building their temple over the site of a destroyed Sith temple totally tracks. The error is in identifying the ruins as the source of the corruption. Symbolically, politically, architecturally, and geographically, the Jedi replaced the Sith when they defeated them. All of the remaining structures in the galaxy that accrued power to the locus of Sith hegemony were now empowering the Jedi instead, who lived just up the street from the Senate building; and, in time, they came to fear losing that power, as one does. Evilness particles did infect the Jedi temple - but rather than seeping up from below, they flowed in from above, and they took the form of things like money, authority, weapons, gestures of deference, and so forth.
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Jan 25, 2024 00:28
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Bongo Bill posted:. Evilness particles did infect the Jedi temple - but rather than seeping up from below, they flowed in from above, and they took the form of things like money, authority, weapons, gestures of deference, and so forth. I think that's just smog
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Jan 25, 2024 00:33
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Halloween Jack posted:My least favourite one of these is "How were the Jedi corrupted by the Dark Side? They accidentally built their temple over top of a Sith temple, so the Evilness Particles seeped into their brains." More Dungeons & Dragons thinking. I think this idea comes from Traitor, a book where a morally ambiguous space chicken tries to convince Han & Leia's son that the Dark Side doesn't even exist. In the book, he visits the former site of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant (after the planet had been conquered by BDSM aliens), and feels a massive surge of dark power. The space chicken tells him that it's because the Jedi Temple was built on top of a Force nexus. Proto-Kylo questions why the Jedi would build their temple on a nexus of the Dark Side, and the chicken tells him they didn't - the Force doesn't take sides, and it just is what it is - the darkness comes from everything else around it. This idea of "there is no Dark Side" was pretty controversial and caused a lot of fandom debate, and eventually later authors had to retcon the space chicken into being an undercover Sith Lord was planting the seeds that eventually turned proto-Kylo to the Dark Side (which does exist for sure now). Because of this retcon, it meant that the Jedi actually did build their temple along evil ley lines and got infected by Evilness Particles.
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Jan 25, 2024 01:04
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putting a kyber crystal on my plumbob and having it go buck wild before breaking ground
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Jan 25, 2024 01:35
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Robot Style posted:I think this idea comes from Traitor, a book where a morally ambiguous space chicken tries to convince Han & Leia's son that the Dark Side doesn't even exist. In the book, he visits the former site of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant (after the planet had been conquered by BDSM aliens), and feels a massive surge of dark power. The space chicken tells him that it's because the Jedi Temple was built on top of a Force nexus. Proto-Kylo questions why the Jedi would build their temple on a nexus of the Dark Side, and the chicken tells him they didn't - the Force doesn't take sides, and it just is what it is - the darkness comes from everything else around it. as per usual, matthew stover writes something good and everyone else in this godforsaken 'expanded universe' loses their drat mind
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Jan 25, 2024 02:37
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PeterWeller posted:I think the issue is less about making metaphors literal. Star Wars is an allegory where the distinction between metaphoric and literal meaning is often collapsed. Consider the droids who are both metaphors for dehumanized underclasses and also literally an inhuman underclass, or how Obi-Wan is a world class bullshitter and that's expressed by him being a wizard with literal magic lying powers. The issue is a desire to explain how these metaphors are also literal instead of just accepting them as such. It's like reading the Grail myth and deciding that it's not enough for the Fisher King's and his kingdom's health being one and the same, so you write an explanation involving chemicals in the local water or how A.A. Attanasio's retelling of the Arthur myth involves the sword being stuck in the stone because of magnetism. You can take it as a generic failure if you wish, reading something that presents itself in a mythic frame instead in a SF frame, needing that Modern nerd audiences in particular seem to really suck with this kind of thing since they've been trained to take everything extremely literally, being both extremely sceptical of basic storytelling elements and extremely credulous about literally anything the characters say. ungulateman posted:as per usual, matthew stover writes something good and everyone else in this godforsaken 'expanded universe' loses their drat mind Yyyep, case in point. The biggest problem with Star Wars is that anyone who actually gets Star Wars confuses the gently caress out of everyone else. Bongo Bill posted:The Jedi building their temple over the site of a destroyed Sith temple totally tracks. The error is in identifying the ruins as the source of the corruption. Symbolically, politically, architecturally, and geographically, the Jedi replaced the Sith when they defeated them. All of the remaining structures in the galaxy that accrued power to the locus of Sith hegemony were now empowering the Jedi instead, who lived just up the street from the Senate building; and, in time, they came to fear losing that power, as one does. Evilness particles did infect the Jedi temple - but rather than seeping up from below, they flowed in from above, and they took the form of things like money, authority, weapons, gestures of deference, and so forth. And it says a lot that at least one poster has been like 'What if Palpatine wasn't even a Sith Lord and just a cunning and powerful politician...' and realises almost nothing changes, because that's the point. Sidious learned to use politics as his primary weapon, and realised everything he needed was already pretty much in place, all he had to do was set the right dominoes up. The politics, the Jedi's particular involvement with them and how in turn it shaped the Jedi meant even the best among them were ultimately serving darkness. Doctor Spaceman posted:The existence of Luke and Leia either undercuts the metaphor or makes her the worst mother in the galaxy. Lol, maybe! That said, I think it's more that all her hope has died. The entire world she'd hoped to bring her children up in has completely collapsed in front of her. She has nothing she can say to her children or give to them, at best to try to live in hiding while the galaxy can only become worse and worse in ways she has no capacity to deal with.
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Jan 25, 2024 03:59
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instead of just accepting the story on its face.
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I can see why they ended up retconning it. In George Lucas' Star Wars, the Dark Side of the Force is a malevolent metaphysical thing that has its own will and desire to do evil. The idea of the Force being this neutral element comes primarily from RPG sourcebooks and novels that referenced RPG sourcebooks, so the fallout of Stover plainly suggesting "the Force has no Dark Side, only you do" may have warranted some Corporate Intervention in the same way Bioware learned that George Lucas says there's no gay people in Star Wars.
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Jan 25, 2024 04:05
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Except George Lucas was very clear that the Force was the Light Side and that the Dark are an imbalance to be corrected. This was no corporate intervention--the Lucas licensing people didn't give half a poo poo about what was being put down on paper nearly the entire time. The entire arc and plot of Legacy of the Force came out of a drug-hazed binge between Troy "I gently caress bugs" Denning and Karen "Grenade my womb" Traviss. The extent of corporate interference upon the series at that time was Del Rey books going "wait you want to do what? Oh ok" VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jan 25, 2024 |
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Jan 25, 2024 04:24
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George says lots of stuff. He’s not in the movies anyway.
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Jan 25, 2024 04:28
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euphronius posted:George says lots of stuff. He’s not in the movies anyway. Wronk! He is mingling around with his daughter in the background of, I think, the opera scene in Episode III.
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Jan 25, 2024 04:56
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PeterWeller posted:I think the issue is less about making metaphors literal. Star Wars is an allegory where the distinction between metaphoric and literal meaning is often collapsed. Consider the droids who are both metaphors for dehumanized underclasses and also literally an inhuman underclass, or how Obi-Wan is a world class bullshitter and that's expressed by him being a wizard with literal magic lying powers. The issue is a desire to explain how these metaphors are also literal instead of just accepting them as such. It's like reading the Grail myth and deciding that it's not enough for the Fisher King's and his kingdom's health being one and the same, so you write an explanation involving chemicals in the local water That's half-right: the metaphorical and the literal are usually collapsed in Star Wars, but it's because it's science fiction. Explaining it is the whole point. Padme's death is a metaphor for the failure of 'our' liberal democracy, but Padme is also literally - objectively, in the diegesis - choosing to die because she's a failure as a liberal democrat. It's not a fantastical metaphor; Padme's hooked up to a medical computer, and the robot doctors explain - almost directly to the audience - that she could have survived her injuries if she tried. But she didn't try. Padme's decision to die is of course related to Anakin's fantasy of making her immortal. That's an obvious metaphor too, but Anakin is literally planning to conduct dubious scientific research into biological immortality. (Natalie Portman would then become biologically immortal FR in the movie Annihilation - a sci-fi retelling of the Grail myth, where the explanation is an alien ball that manipulates quantum physics.) SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Jan 25, 2024 |
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Jan 25, 2024 07:23
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:Except George Lucas was very clear that the Force was the Light Side and that the Dark are an imbalance to be corrected. I don't know if Lucas said anything about the "light side of the force" in an interview or something, but it's never mentioned in the OT or PT. Yoda describes the force as a neutral energy that binds the universe together. The dark side is never really explained too much, but it stands for people using the force for selfish/violent goals and getting hosed up in the head by doing so. You get sith point for doing force crimes, but you don't get any light side points for doing good deeds.
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Jan 25, 2024 09:48
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Captain Jesus posted:I don't know if Lucas said anything about the "light side of the force" in an interview or something
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Jan 25, 2024 10:25
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The Dim Side of the Force
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Jan 25, 2024 11:36
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nFMBBrliyQ&t=41s
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Jan 25, 2024 11:39
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Doctor Spaceman posted:The existence of Luke and Leia either undercuts the metaphor or makes her the worst mother in the galaxy. She doesn't know those loving kids  Ghost Leviathan posted:That said, I think it's more that all her hope has died. The entire world she'd hoped to bring her children up in has completely collapsed in front of her. She has nothing she can say to her children or give to them, at best to try to live in hiding while the galaxy can only become worse and worse in ways she has no capacity to deal with. Yeah, that's a better way to phrase it.
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Jan 25, 2024 13:57
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Padme's death is a metaphor for the failure of 'our' liberal democracy, but Padme is also literally - objectively, in the diegesis - choosing to die because she's a failure as a liberal democrat. It's not a fantastical metaphor; Padme's hooked up to a medical computer, and the robot doctors explain - almost directly to the audience - that she could have survived her injuries if she tried. But she didn't try. If not trying enables you to just die, I should be dead many times over.
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Jan 25, 2024 15:13
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Bongo Bill posted:The Jedi building their temple over the site of a destroyed Sith temple totally tracks. The error is in identifying the ruins as the source of the corruption. Symbolically, politically, architecturally, and geographically, the Jedi replaced the Sith when they defeated them. All of the remaining structures in the galaxy that accrued power to the locus of Sith hegemony were now empowering the Jedi instead, who lived just up the street from the Senate building; and, in time, they came to fear losing that power, as one does. Evilness particles did infect the Jedi temple - but rather than seeping up from below, they flowed in from above, and they took the form of things like money, authority, weapons, gestures of deference, and so forth. The Jedi Temple being built over the site of a Sith temple makes me wonder, how tall is the Jedi Temple? Because it's at the "top" of Coruscant, and Coruscant has over 5,000 levels. Does it reach to the bottom and just has 5,000 stories of crazy poo poo going on? Or is there, like, a Starbucks 2,000 levels below it that's also been corrupted by the Sith?
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Jan 25, 2024 16:05
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thrawn527 posted:The Jedi Temple being built over the site of a Sith temple makes me wonder, how tall is the Jedi Temple? Because it's at the "top" of Coruscant, and Coruscant has over 5,000 levels. Does it reach to the bottom and just has 5,000 stories of crazy poo poo going on? Or is there, like, a Starbucks 2,000 levels below it that's also been corrupted by the Sith? I prefer to believe the Sith Temple is absolutely an endgame dungeon going all the way down, because that sounds exactly like something the Sith would do. And it also has a Sithbucks.
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Jan 25, 2024 16:22
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The sith temple is actually Dex’s diner
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Jan 25, 2024 16:24
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Exploring the Jedi/Sith temple megadungeon would be awesome. Too bad they obliterated Coruscant/Hosnian Prime in Episode VII.
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Jan 25, 2024 16:27
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I’m sure there is a holocron of it somewhere at least. (I’m still mad JJ didn’t use the word holocron for the holocron on episode 9)
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Jan 25, 2024 16:27
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Halloween Jack posted:Exploring the Jedi/Sith temple megadungeon would be awesome. Too bad they obliterated Coruscant/Hosnian Prime in Episode VII. It's just floating there in space totally intact
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Jan 25, 2024 16:29
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The Force being what you make of it, light or dark, makes so much sense that I'm not surprised Lucas has moved away from that to blood quantum Force adeptitude.
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Jan 25, 2024 16:30
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The blood test thing for the force was deprecated as an idea by the events of the movie. The Jedi were wrong to use blood tests and suffered
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Jan 25, 2024 16:31
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thrawn527 posted:The Jedi Temple being built over the site of a Sith temple makes me wonder, how tall is the Jedi Temple? Because it's at the "top" of Coruscant, and Coruscant has over 5,000 levels. Does it reach to the bottom and just has 5,000 stories of crazy poo poo going on? Or is there, like, a Starbucks 2,000 levels below it that's also been corrupted by the Sith? The Starbucks was there first and corrupted the Sith temple.
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Jan 25, 2024 16:52
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Somehow, pumpkin spice returned
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Jan 25, 2024 16:56
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:That's half-right: the metaphorical and the literal are usually collapsed in Star Wars, but it's because it's science fiction. Explaining it is the whole point. Explaining things is also the point of myths, moreso than SF really. The issue is looking for a mechanistic or scientistic explanation for something that already has an explanation: she died because she and the Republic failed. Anakin cannot use the Dark Side to make her immortal because the Dark Side is death. euphronius posted:The blood test thing for the force was deprecated as an idea by the events of the movie. The Jedi were wrong to use blood tests and suffered Yes. Ep1 straight up shows you that trying to find scientistic explanations for the way the SW universe works is, at best, misguided.
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Jan 25, 2024 16:58
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RBA Starblade posted:It's just floating there in space totally intact
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Jan 25, 2024 17:08
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Captain Jesus posted:I don't know if Lucas said anything about the "light side of the force" in an interview or something, but it's never mentioned in the OT or PT. Yoda describes the force as a neutral energy that binds the universe together. The dark side is never really explained too much, but it stands for people using the force for selfish/violent goals and getting hosed up in the head by doing so. You get sith point for doing force crimes, but you don't get any light side points for doing good deeds. In the various making-of books from the Original Trilogy, there's a lot of quotes from story conferences and other discussions from the 70's and 80's where Lucas referred to the Force as having a "Good" side and a "Dark" or "Evil" side. The specific terminology of a "light side" comes from the West End Games RPG, which then filtered out into the wider Star Wars lexicon. Lucas eventually picked up the "Light Side" terminology (potentially during the production of the Clone Wars, since he uses the phrase in making-of material for the show), but the Force has always had objective good and evil components to it.
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Jan 25, 2024 19:16
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PeterWeller posted:Explaining things is also the point of myths, moreso than SF really. The issue is looking for a mechanistic or scientistic explanation for something that already has an explanation: she died because she and the Republic failed. Anakin cannot use the Dark Side to make her immortal because the Dark Side is death. The ‘mechanism’ of myth is psychology, which you do have in Lucas’ Star Wars with Luke’s hallucinatory vision quests and the ghosts and such. Just writing things like “the dark side is death”, however, is obscurantism. The point of Anakin’s quest for immortality is not that it can’t work due to magic, but that there is a difference between biological immortality and spiritual immortality. As Yoda puts it in Episode 5: “Help them you could - but you would destroy all for which they have fought, and suffered.” Yoda is not talking any kind of mystic bullshit here; he’s straightforwardly telling Luke to sacrifice these people for the good of the Rebellion, presumably based on what happened to Anakin. And that’s not a totally bad call, because we see in Episode 6 that Luke is only a hair away from joining Palpatine in exchange for Leia’s survival. But Yoda is also demonstrating a clear attachment to the Republic and its liberal capitalism, which is why he can’t step in - leaving it up to “another”. In the context of the prequels, that ends up being Darth Vader - the radical Christ figure whose death is the death of the Force itself (i.e. God, in all his guises).
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Jan 26, 2024 01:44
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The ‘mechanism’ of myth is psychology, which you do have in Lucas’ Star Wars with Luke’s hallucinatory vision quests and the ghosts and such. I'd call it metaphor, but I think that's really just a semantics argument. And fair enough. I'll tease it out more. The point isn't that there's a difference between biological and spiritual immortality. The point is that, in Star Wars via the Force, spiritual immortality is biological immortality. Anakin's failure, the failure of all who fall to the Dark Side, is seeing biological death as an end, both existentially and as a goal, and fearing it. This is why I say the Dark Side is death. Yoda is straight up wrong in asking Luke to sacrifice his friends for the cause. Saving his friends aids the cause. Springing the trap and confronting Vader is how Luke discovers that Anakin still lives. Understanding that Anakin is alive still in form and spirit is what allows Luke to lead him to redemption.
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Jan 26, 2024 18:05
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PeterWeller posted:Yoda is straight up wrong in asking Luke to sacrifice his friends for the cause. Saving his friends aids the cause. Springing the trap and confronting Vader is how Luke discovers that Anakin still lives. Understanding that Anakin is alive still in form and spirit is what allows Luke to lead him to redemption. But he didn’t save his friends though. The whole point of the climax is that Luke rushed into a situation he wasn’t ready for and it blows up in his face. Leia, Chewie, and Threepio not only escape with no help from Luke, they in fact save him.
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Jan 26, 2024 21:01
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galagazombie posted:But he didn’t save his friends though. The whole point of the climax is that Luke rushed into a situation he wasn’t ready for and it blows up in his face. Leia, Chewie, and Threepio not only escape with no help from Luke, they in fact save him. I see what you're saying, but would they have escaped if Vader was focused on them and not distracted by his battle with Luke? Hence PeterWeller's comment about Luke "springing the trap". And Luke going to Cloud City in order to try to save his friends is how he learns about Anakin, which ultimately leads to the Emperor's downfall. Even if that wasn't his original intention, obviously.
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Jan 26, 2024 21:49
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Here's what Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas had to say about it at the time of making the movie:Lawrence Kasdan posted:It is the great dilemma of the entire film. In making his decision to rescue his friends, Luke reveals his character flaw or his character strength. This element of ambiguity makes it very rich. His decision is a moral decision and a political decision: He leaves his training before he’s finished—at the expense of a greater vision for the good of all, let’s say. Yes, he’d love to save the entire galaxy from the Empire, but he feels it’s more important to save his friends at this moment. George Lucas posted:It’s one of those things that’s risky in terms of storytelling. Basically, he screws up and everything turns bad because of his emotional decision, where he knows that he’s not ready but goes anyway. His attachment makes for a very selfish decision. So when they were making the movie, the idea was that Luke's decision to go was a mistake... but obviously as the story continued Luke was retroactively proven correct because it opened the door for him to reconnect with his father and led to Vader killing the Emperor.
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Jan 26, 2024 22:36
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It's a Frodo/Gollum thing where not murking Gollum makes Frodo look like a wuss but ultimately he's in the right because there are enough homicidal assholes around and sparing Gollum then means he gets to chew off Frodo's finger later, which saves the day.
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Jan 26, 2024 22:41
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If Luke had not gone to Cloud City, he would not have faced Vader before he was ready and lost his hand. Tragic, but that lesson about acting before thinking is what saved him in the Death Star II (him looking at his hand and then seeing Vader's severed robot hand was both a reminder of his Cloud City mistake and the similarity between himself and his father). I tend towards the ' not a mistake' side because selflessness is supposed to be one of the big Jedi "fruits of the spirit".
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Jan 26, 2024 22:42
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Also, Leia, Chewie and Lando would not have been fine without Luke showing up. The Falcons hyperdrive was hosed and it's only R2 fixing it that allowed them to escape. And Luke was the one who brought R2 along, so a victory for ignoring Yoda I guess.
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Jan 26, 2024 22:50
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I think there's been a discussion before about whether to interpret Yoda and Ben's warnings as legitimate danger for Luke or because he wasn't following the path they had in mind for him. I don't have a particular opinion on that but it adds an interesting dimension to the plot.
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Jan 26, 2024 22:55
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