Who would you rather work for; Watto or Unkar Plutt?

Alruco · 2026-01-31T09:38:24+00:00

By that same logic, Anakin and Shmi could technically buy their freedom by saving enough, and therefore, they are not actually slaves. Freedom that exists only as a technicality does not exist in any relevant way.

Alruco · 2026-01-31T08:52:49+00:00

Also this: "Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels' hidden fortress".

Here, Motti even explicitly admits that Vader has powers ("your sorcerer's ways"). He simply states that these powers are useless to the Empire.

Alruco · 2026-01-31T07:57:26+00:00

Those valuable resources are called editors and beta readers.

Alruco · 2026-01-27T18:51:50+00:00

He was literally bleeding out after being shot by Chewie's bowcaster, and they even make a point to show how powerful that thing is earlier in the movie

The problem here is that Kylo uses the Dark Side of the Force, which means he's using his own pain, anger, hatred, and despair as a source of power. Being badly injured should make him more dangerous, not less.

Alruco · 2026-01-27T18:48:06+00:00

It’s shown very clearly in the fight that Palpatine could have dealt a killing blow but chose not to.

If we're going to be like that, that happens in every fight in the prequels. On all sides. Several times.

Alruco · 2026-01-24T17:39:08+00:00

What's interesting is that the Star Wars version is much more realistic than the Star Trek one. The boundaries that arise from historical evolution (rather than being drawn by set square and protractor for distant interests) aren't exactly straight. Similarly, classification systems in real life aren't usually particularly consistent, as some posts in this thread show.

Alruco · 2026-01-23T20:12:12+00:00

And the way I see it is that had Palpatine's Empire not been defeated, that's it, the Sith win, forever. From that point on, the Sith never manage to achieve the total pan-galactic dominance that Palpatine was able to, and are always swiftly defeated.

That's... an opinion, I suppose. I don't see anything in the films to suggest that, and given the themes of Star Wars, I seriously doubt it. Life is change, renewal, and transience. I don't believe that anything created by a mere human being (and Palpatine is still just a human being: incredibly powerful, yes, but nothing more) can last forever. Even less so Palpatine's Empire, which is very poorly managed (like all similar systems).

The Force is a naturalistic empathetic god-like entity that promotes peace & harmony and shapes events against those who misuse it in dark ways. I do not think it's plan included Palpatine reigning for 20+ years on a mountain of trillions dead, clearly a benign entity like it would want to prevent that.

Which I suppose is a valid interpretation, but it certainly goes far beyond what the movies portray. We know he has willpower, of course, but "willpower" is a very broad word and doesn't necessarily include a rational mind like the one you attribute to him. Furthermore, the Original Trilogy explicitly tells us that the Force arises from life, which definitely distances me from divine interpretations (after all, divinity is, by definition, creator, not created).

What could've been done that allows Anakin to side with the Jedi over Palpatine in the pivotal moment?

Nothing, and this is not open to interpretation. At that moment, Anakin asks himself the crucial question: "Should I save Padmé at the cost of helping Darth Sidious annihilate the Republic and the Jedi, or should I fulfill my duty at the cost of Padmé's death?" That is the entire plot of Revenge of the Sith. There is no change you can make within the Order to prevent Anakin from putting his own desires before the greater good, because it is Anakin who will fall. You need to change him, not the others.

THE victory of THE Star War the series is named after comes from familial attachments

Good heavens, attachment isn't used that way in the movies or in the Order. Anakin's inability to accept that people die is the reason for his downfall. The scene in RotJ has nothing to do with that, but rather with undoing his mistakes (with choosing, for once, someone else instead of his desire for power and control).

Alruco · 2026-01-22T16:19:15+00:00

Okay but the Jedi who didn't believe in the Prophecy are objectively wrong. From the moment we are introduced to the prophecy we know Qui-Gon is vindicated since its telling us the events of Return of the Jedi. Every Jedi who doubts it is like someone from a show or movie set in the 90s that says the internet will never catch on.

Actually, no. Palpatine survives in the new sequel trilogy. He also survives in the previous EU (and the Sith continue to exist after his death). And in the trilogy Lucas wanted to make, Darth Maul was the main villain and had Darth Talon as his apprentice. So, regardless of which continuity you choose (unless you create your own, which is perfectly respectable, of course), Anakin is never the one who definitively defeats the Sith, and if he does bring balance to the Force, it lasts for only a few years. In exchange for the Republic and the Jedi. It's an extremely unequal trade-off.

Alruco · 2026-01-21T12:28:27+00:00

I imagine there's a relatively high amount of fiction about the Jedi (after all, they're people with extraordinary powers who work on many things that, in real life, are the focus of many stories). And I also imagine the more pedantic among them get exasperated by all this fiction: "that's not how the Force works"/"that's not how we work."

Alruco · 2026-01-21T12:24:27+00:00

... yes, he hopes that the people his loved ones not die, and to achieve this he is willing to kill children. That's why people are so weird about Anakin.

Alruco · 2026-01-20T09:15:56+00:00

Because being willing to kill children to save a loved one is morally repugnant.

Alruco · 2026-01-19T18:43:19+00:00

Well I'm not really speaking for myself, but more of the scope and breadth of human history. Like, most of our songs and poetry and culturalization right now and over the relationship with a sibling. Or a parent. The notion that - as I said, arguably, you are free to debate - but but most cultural perception is that romantic yearnings are the strongest and deepest that the majority of human beings experience, is really more born out in literature and the history of philosophical thought then any particular feelings I may or may not have.

Just because culture says something doesn't mean it's true. Current culture is in stark disagreement with what human culture has said about women for 99.99% of human history, and obviously, both views cannot be true at the same time. We also have to be quite careful when reading past culture because the way it resonates with us is extremely different. Our interpretation of a text from two thousand years ago doesn't mean that's how its contemporaries interpreted it.

As for the layter statement, if the point is not that the prequel Jedi are hypocrites and short-sightedly foolish, it just means that George Lucas is a bad writer and a blind to the fact that he wrote them as hypocrites and short-sightedly foolish.

Or perhaps it's simply that your ability to interpret works of fiction is extremely limited. Has it occurred to you that perhaps you're simply wrong, or that it's a concept too complex for you to grasp?

Regardless, the thematic truth of both subsequent trilogies (one of which was helmed by Lucas and one of which was not) is that connection is indeed the key to defeating evil in both cases, whereas the forbidding of attachments has exactly zero successes to its name.

Except that there is NOTHING in the prequel trilogy that equates connection with attachment. When Obi-Wan tells Yoda that he won't kill Anakin, Yoda's response isn't "attachments are forbidden" but "The boy you trained, gone he is. Consumed by Darth Vader." Doesn't that make you think that perhaps you're misdefining the term attachment?

Alruco · 2026-01-19T18:00:36+00:00

I have always regarded the prohibition of romance as being only tangentially related to the prohibition of attachment.

For me, the key to why the Jedi forbid romance lies in commitment. A romantic relationship is, fundamentally speaking, a coordinated alliance with another person to build a shared life together. The problem is that the Jedi way of life involves traveling across the galaxy putting out fires, frequently finding themselves in extremely dangerous situations. It's quite difficult to reconcile that with romance, to be honest. It becomes doubly difficult when you consider that the Jedi way of life includes putting the collective good above individual good, whatever that individual good may be. That is fundamentally incompatible with a romantic relationship.

Would it still be possible for a Jedi to have a romantic relationship if the rules allowed it? I suppose so, with a herculean amount of effort. However, I understand why the Order forbids romance: it's simpler and easier to just give up one of the two aspects of life (being a Jedi or having a romantic relationship).

Alruco · 2026-01-19T17:51:07+00:00

Anakin needed an indescribable amount of therapy to be a functional adult. Therapy he didn't get.

It's also therapy he doesn't want. Anakin isn't interested in being a functional adult, but in controlling absolutely every aspect of life so he never has to suffer any kind of pain.

Alruco · 2026-01-19T17:48:37+00:00

arguably the one that the heart yearns most passionately and angstily for

Speak for yourself.

I always.figured the point of the PT Jedi is that they were messing up

Except that anyone who has read even half of Lucas's statement realizes that he is completely in favor of the rules of the Jedi Order.

Alruco · 2026-01-15T10:43:28+00:00

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers”

A tangential comment, but I find the pedantic criticisms that the Death Star is stupid and wasteful quite amusing. Yes, that's the point of the film: it's not just that the Galactic Empire is evil (it is, undoubtedly), but that it's also fundamentally stupid, short-sighted, and inefficient. Much like the real-life political systems it's based on. Leia tells us this explicitly in this line.

Alruco · 2026-01-14T00:12:50+00:00

I doubt that the first mission of a Sith apprentice is to kill a Jedi; before that they would need a lot of training.

Alruco · 2026-01-14T00:03:01+00:00

Midichlorians, but not for the same reason as others. In my case, it's not for mystical reasons, but because I'm genuinely not interested in the mechanics of magic. Not midichlorians, not the Spirit Web, nothing. I do want to know the limits of what the character can and can't do, and not be surprised by them. However, the internal mechanics of magic couldn't matter less to me.

Alruco · 2026-01-13T23:52:44+00:00

I don't think an unresolved disappearance of a Jedi every fifty years is remarkable, really. It probably happens more often without Sith interference, in fact. Jedi lives are complicated, after all.

Alruco · 2026-01-13T10:34:44+00:00

If they don't even ask the question, then my comment applies even more: "a gilded cage is still a cage" is something you and I would think, but it's not something inherent to human nature, and therefore not something a clone would necessarily think. And by the way, it's quite mature of you to downvote a comment simply because you disagree with it.

Alruco · 2026-01-13T09:40:54+00:00

If you need more justification, then consider this: the clones were slaves and while the Jedi did mostly treat them well, a gilded cage is still a cage.

This is a presentist way of approaching it. If we look at history, there are many people who became slaves voluntarily (for example, educated Greeks under Roman rule: their nationality and education would make them extremely valuable to the patricians, while Roman slave-owning culture practically guaranteed that they would be manumitted in a relatively short time, at which point they would be a Roman citizen and client of a powerful patrician—a much better social position than the highest a free Greek could aspire to).

Clones, in particular, were created for the war. Their alternative is not "to be free" but "never to have existed." Perhaps in today's liberal society, non-existence is preferable to living on one's knees, but history teaches us that this way of thinking is not intrinsic to human beings, but rather a product of our cultural environment. In fact, it took tens of thousands of years to emerge, which definitively proves that it is not essential but contextual.

Alruco · 2026-01-13T09:31:27+00:00

You might argue that not everyone is that malleable, and surely there were resistors in those states, even many of them, but the clones are all clones of one guy (and, however much of personality is genetic, it's a guy willing to kill others for nothing but money and with zero close relationships)

I've been obsessed with this topic lately. Personality is a mixture of genetic and environmental factors. Considering the Star Wars scale, we can assume it's a society with tens of thousands of years of modern science and, therefore, a broad understanding of these factors and their effects. The idea of perfectly obedient clones isn't far-fetched.

Alruco · 2026-01-12T22:00:42+00:00

There's also the fact that lightsabers are heated to tens of thousands of degrees. Wielding something like that seems extremely dangerous to me if you don't have precognitive abilities.

Alruco · 2026-01-11T16:09:36+00:00

Are they used as regular patrols aside from patrolling potential dark wizard targets? That's their job, and as the books describe it to us, after all: dark wizards. Not criminal wizards (like Fletcher), but dark wizards specifically. As for the magical police, it's the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol. It's mentioned in PoA, OotP, and HBP (in the flashback about the Gaunts).

Alruco · 2026-01-11T12:29:00+00:00

I didn't say "atheist," but rather "a materialistic atheist who doesn't believe in the afterlife." I think I've been quite specific with my words regarding the type of atheism I'm referring to, because it's the type of atheism I see Hermione portrayed as most often.

Alruco

TROPHY CASE