Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Star Wars having black and white morality is not necessarily a bad thing. Star Wars is, in part, about how in any age there will always be good and evil.

There's a theology to The Force. The Dark Side is, essentially, a God of Evil. It's essentially the Star Wars equivalent of "The Devil on your shoulder". The Dark Side bugs you into making bad decisions in exchange for a license to look edgy and be hammy.

Depends on how many of theologies are going to be canon. Black and white doesn't come into it as far as I can see.

Edited by TerminusEst on Apr 17th 2019 at 10:47:27 AM

The current take on the dark side is better described as a numbing effect than a corruption: a steroid rather than heroin. It spurs you on and allows you to feed on your anger to effect, but it doesn’t control your actions, and your choices are still your own - and this has been consistent across all current media, as far as I’m aware.

Or to put it a different way: it exaggerates you, but it doesn’t make you. The rage and selfishness that drives every darksider in the current canon belongs to them, not to the dark side itself.

Hence the existence of a character like Kylo Ren, who was introduced as someone who believed in the dark side but was on a journey to understand how to embody it (essentially a contrast of the typical Jedi path), and waffled around until making the hard choice to cut himself off from his old ties and throw himself into it: a character type that couldnt exist in the old EU (as using the dark side would simply make him that way outright).

The only instance of outright corruption in the current EU is via The Son, a Physical God who can make you turn evil by what it effectively possession. But according to Word of God, even The Son isn’t literally an avatar of the Dark Side itself.

I wouldn’t trust Wookiepedia for anything until they clean up their act, btw. At this point, even our site is a more reliable source of information.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 17th 2019 at 11:14:20 AM

But I think there is a point to be made that the Jedi aren't... great. It's why Luke's approach in the EU where they are allowed to have families (thereby preventing the sort of divided loyalties, which leads to fear, which leads to all those negative, exploitable emotions) was a good idea.

Disney has to a degree shown forbidding it a good idea as IIRC a former Jedi Master and member of the Council who survived Order 66 and started a family was willing to help Vader and Sidious hunt down other survivors in exchange for his families life only to be refused and killed while distracted in his duel with Vader by their capture at the hands of Inquisitors and had been trying to use the Dark Side against Vader.

Edited by doineedaname on Apr 17th 2019 at 1:55:17 PM

The old Jedi Order's stance to avoid attachments was ultimately a bad idea, but they didn't have it for no reason at all.

Is there a case of force sensitive lightsaber users going the third way? Unaffiliated with light or dark, these people do whatever the fuck they want.

Granted my knowledge of Star Wars franchise is poor but is there a third side to it that just doesn't give a fuck about Jedi or Sith?

Like Jedi or Sith driven by most extreme Greed imaginable, just a thought

Any Jedi or Sith that were greedy and were robbing banks?

Grey Jedi were something that appeared in the old canon, but Lucas shut that right down.

Ahsoka and Ventress, arguably.

Ahsoka was kicked out the Jedi, but basically kept being a light side hero - just without Jedi restrictions. She’s still basically a Jedi, though, minus really wanting to kill Vader.

Ventress eventually got tired of being used and abused by everyone and quit the Sith to strike out on her own, essentially wandering around as a nerd with a heart of gold, helping out the little guy while getting paid. She hated both the Jedi and the Sith pretty much equally before her death, but was more or less a good guy.

Pablo Hidalgo has confirmed that the old EU concept of Grey Jedi as Token Heroic Orc edgy 90’s style antiheroes who got to use dark side powers as much as they want and yet still be touted as cool heroes don’t exist any more, and good riddance, but Ventress is probably the closest you’re going to get to it.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 17th 2019 at 11:26:26 AM

But in both cases they were ultimately with the Light Side of the Force.

They just weren't part of any official Order anymore.

Like I said, Ventress is probably the closest thing to it in the current EU. She largely doesn’t use the force at all towards her death, but doesn’t skew in either direction and is willing to use whatever ability she thinks she ought to survive.

But even so, it’s still ultimately more like if you gave a neutral bounty hunter archetype force powers than an out and out Grey Jedi characterization wise.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 17th 2019 at 11:27:09 AM

Still she spent her remaining days choosing a lifestyle that involved helping others in need (for a fee of course).

That's definitely leaning more towards Light than Dark, even if she rarely ever used the Force.

Yeah, more or less. That's a decent sum up of what I said.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 17th 2019 at 11:38:01 AM

These past few pages have been fascinating.

Comparing the dark side to a steroid addiction is so incredibly on point imho, you get the same power tripping assholes smashing stuff because they can.

A lot of people are way harsh on the Jedi at large, forgetting they're largely selfless heroes. The line between a flawed hero and a horrific Knight Templar is not thin.

Having Jedi debate more often would be nice but they rarely meet as equals since the entire order gets wiped out so often forcing just a smattering of masters and apprenctices.

The main problems with the Jedi, namely their stagnancy comes from the fact they've successfully protected the galaxy for over a 1000 years.

Of course they got complacent, it happens to every organization that exits for long periods of time.

Without the Sith to shake things up, they just kinda settled into a comfortable sofa cushion.

It might be interesting to see a prequel about the Jedi themselves, maybe centuries in the past where their standards of attachment were looser, before some horrible cataclysm forcibly changes the way they feel about both attachment and the dark side.

That was part of why the Sith went into hiding in the first place and did the Rule of Two thing. They let the Jedi think they were extinct to encourage complacency. The Sith were playing the Long Game, trying to figure out what exactly would be the best way to finish off the Jedi Order. Eventually, the Sith settled on politics.

And if the Jedi weren't exactly suited to be generals, they were even less suited to be politicians.

Which is kinda funny when you say it out loud with the whole mind trick thing

They must have been too honest to abuse it

Edited by VutherA on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:41:10 AM

The Jedi were once so mighty that their nemesis had to play dead, stay hidden, & slowly chip away at their weakness for a thousand years.

Which makes Luke look like even more of a fuck up considering his Order was dealt with just by one rogue student he wound up provoking due to an emotional reaction.

I think the Mind Trick is something they try to temper. Plus it doesn’t always work.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 17th 2019 at 6:42:20 AM

I mean look, he already saved the galaxy before by killing people, it's a natural pattern to fall into (or his dad also did, either way, lesson learned)

Edited by VutherA on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:43:40 AM

Yeah, using the Jedi Mind Trick to win elections would be so against the Jedi Code it's not even funny. And it doesn't always work either.

TBF, Luke's Order only had one bonafide Jedi Master, namely himself. The rest were all his students.

Edited by M84 on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:45:49 PM

Even so the man couldn’t get things to go at least 50 years.

It just imploded without even reaching its second generation.

Very shameful.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 17th 2019 at 6:49:22 AM

That's what happens when your most powerful student ever snaps and decides to kill everyone.

Luke was teaching by the seat of his pants, after all. His training was left incomplete, and suddenly he had the responsibility of teaching a bunch of children and teenagers who could move things with their minds. It's not a responsibility I'd volunteer for.

Prolly should have just stuck with one or two apprentices and then slowly build from there after each becomes enough of a Knight or Master.

It also didn't help that he knew he couldn't just emulate his predecessors completely. He knew that they were heavily flawed as well. Heck, they were even wrong about his father never being able to return from the Dark Side.

In the Rot S novelization, the entire reason Yoda and Obiwan didn't just take Luke and Leia and raise them personally to be Jedi was because Yoda had realized that the Jedi Order's ways were obsolete — that's why they lost to the Sith. So Yoda instead decided to let the twins live their own lives and let the Will of the Force guide them.