On ‎16‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 10:22 PM, KungFuFerret said:

So yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all. Though I do love your comment about Sith picking red to be "individual". Considering that's the ONLY color ALL OF THEM use, I find that irony most amusing.

I would say it's the same reason they all wear black, but then going by Return of the Jedi, the proper Jedi uniform is a black tunic and trousers.

Obi-Wan only wore brown robes because he was hiding out on Tatooine and that's what everyone on Tatooine wore. Then along comes the prequels and for some daft reason the Jedi uniform is ... brown robes? That's nonsense (unless you're a fit bird, in which case you get something tight-fitting that shows off the midriff - but still brown ).

But my comment about the red Sith lightsabers was meant to be facetious, but actually I think there's a ring of truth about it. Apparently, red lightsabers use artificial crystals, and apparently the Sith only use artificial crystals. So basically, they're all cheap hipsters.

2 hours ago, AndrewGPaul said:

But my comment about the red Sith lightsabers was meant to be facetious, but actually I think there's a ring of truth about it. Apparently, red lightsabers use artificial crystals, and apparently the Sith only use artificial crystals. So basically, they're all cheap hipsters.

The use of artificial crystals in Sith lightsabers was actually a natural development. After the contact of the original sith empire with the republic, the Sith for the most part did not use red lightsabers (Freedon Nadd used an orange blade, Exar Kun used a blue saber, Ulic Qel Droma used a green). The use of red lightsabers in Legends has origins in Vitiates' Sith Empire, where in hiding, the Sith did not have regular access to sites with crystals suitable for building lightsabers.

In periods where they did have access to crystal locations it had already become so ingrained in Sith tradition that they made their crystals artificially anyway - and not all red crystals were artificial in nature - Dantooine had natural growths of red crystals. Eventually the use of artificial crystals moved away from mere necessity to a display of power over the force: whereas the Jedi went through rigorous trials to obtain their crystals, the Sith took the proverbial "short and easy way" and used their power to simply create their own.

In the old post-Return of the Jedi continuity, even the Jedi turned to using artificial crystals as the New Jedi Order as they no longer had knowledge of reliable crystals sources and the ones they did know had been destroyed or strip-mined by the empire . But of course this is all irrelevant now because the sith simply steal crystals and make them bleed now (kill me, I hate the new canon only slightly less than I hate the excesses of the old canon).

4 hours ago, AndrewGPaul said:

Obi-Wan only wore brown robes because he was hiding out on Tatooine and that's what everyone on Tatooine wore. Then along comes the prequels and for some daft reason the Jedi uniform is ... brown robes? That's nonsense (unless you're a fit bird, in which case you get something tight-fitting that shows off the midriff - but still brown ).

They're sci-fi peasant/monk robes. Think Friar Tuck for a pop culture example. The Jedi wear the same thing that the Star Wars equivalent of a simple peasant or farmer wears.

5 hours ago, AndrewGPaul said:

I would say it's the same reason they all wear black, but then going by Return of the Jedi, the proper Jedi uniform is a black tunic and trousers.

I think you're hitting on something a little deeper there. Looking at Luke's behavior at the outset of the film, we see him in black and Force-choking the guards in Jabba's palace. He threatens Jabba with destruction, and warns him not to "underestimate my powers." Any of that sound familiar?

I think the black was purposeful.

2 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

I think you're hitting on something a little deeper there. Looking at Luke's behavior at the outset of the film, we see him in black and Force-choking the guards in Jabba's palace. He threatens Jabba with destruction, and warns him not to "underestimate my powers." Any of that sound familiar?

I think the black was purposeful.

I was going to say, I remember watching a tv special many years ago, about the nature of the Star Wars story, and the literary elements in it. This one woman mentioned how he wears black through the whole movie, suggesting he has fallen to the dark side, or is at least on the edge. But then at the end, when his shirt is torn open, we see a white lining, indicating that the out black coloring was just a ruse, a trick to get him close enough to defeat the emperor. She was leaning heavily on an amount of symbolism that might be more than we can accredit to George Lucas, but it was an interesting theory anyway.

While that theory seems to be reaching a bit, it's not entirely without merit.

Remember, Star Wars draws much inspiration from numerous sources and genres, stories and films. One was Westerns, and in early black-and-white Western films (at the least), bad guys always wore black and the good guys wore lighter colors, simply to make it easier for the audiences to make out who's who.

Yep, she went into a lot more detail than I did of course, I was simply paraphrasing.

And GL is big on this symbolism stuff, he may have trouble to write decent dialog, but that sounds totally like something he would be doing intentionally.

On 6/17/2017 at 11:22 PM, HappyDaze said:

Yeah, I still don't see much anti-blue blade bias (ABBB) but I have noticed that my friends tend to view anything outside of red/blue/green/yellow as weird. Not sure why they accept yellow but not purple, except that they think Mace (more specifically SLJ) was a special snowflake in demanding that color.

Some of the early figures had yellow blades:

23 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

Some of the early figures had yellow blades:

That's not a blade, that is either a very unhealthy sausage, a partially inflated long balloon....or an adult toy of impressive length. Given the smirk on Luke's face, I'm going with the latter.

On 6/18/2017 at 9:32 AM, KungFuFerret said:

I was going to say, I remember watching a tv special many years ago, about the nature of the Star Wars story, and the literary elements in it. This one woman mentioned how he wears black through the whole movie, suggesting he has fallen to the dark side, or is at least on the edge. But then at the end, when his shirt is torn open, we see a white lining, indicating that the out black coloring was just a ruse, a trick to get him close enough to defeat the emperor. She was leaning heavily on an amount of symbolism that might be more than we can accredit to George Lucas, but it was an interesting theory anyway.

Huh. That seems like a reach to me...but definitely interesting. I would say that Luke's behavior throughout the movie would deny the idea that he was deliberately trying to fool the Emperor. When he did that beat-down on Vader—cutting off his saber hand—and then gazed at his own mechanical hand, his look is of a horrible realization. I would venture to guess that he didn't even realize how close he was to the dark side until just then, given his facial expressions.

The white lining of the black tunic was cool. Hard to ignore the visual symbolism. Light piercing the shadows, hope shining in darkness, probably reflecting Luke's own proclivities—a visual representation that, even though he was nearly consumed by darkness, he made a conscious choice to turn away from it. I can imagine that, again, the costuming was very intentional there in some way. It doesn't need to be definite to be evocative—visual art rarely does. But a secret, pre-planned ruse?? He was wearing that black tunic well before he even knew he had to face Vader & the Emperor. I have a hard time believing it

2 hours ago, awayputurwpn said:

Huh. That seems like a reach to me...but definitely interesting. I would say that Luke's behavior throughout the movie would deny the idea that he was deliberately trying to fool the Emperor. When he did that beat-down on Vader—cutting off his saber hand—and then gazed at his own mechanical hand, his look is of a horrible realization. I would venture to guess that he didn't even realize how close he was to the dark side until just then, given his facial expressions.

The white lining of the black tunic was cool. Hard to ignore the visual symbolism. Light piercing the shadows, hope shining in darkness, probably reflecting Luke's own proclivities—a visual representation that, even though he was nearly consumed by darkness, he made a conscious choice to turn away from it. I can imagine that, again, the costuming was very intentional there in some way. It doesn't need to be definite to be evocative—visual art rarely does. But a secret, pre-planned ruse?? He was wearing that black tunic well before he even knew he had to face Vader & the Emperor. I have a hard time believing it

Sorry, let me clarify, my paraphrasing might have mis-represented her statement. She didn't give the impression that LUKE did this on purpose, but that the director did it as a bit of visual narrative. That they put him in black, to make him look more sinister, just like introducing Vader in all black. To make the audience think maybe he's gone bad. And that the "he's actually good on the inside, see his inner lining?" thing, was again, a storytelling clue for the audience. She did not imply that this was some intentional fashion choice on Luke's part, before going to face the Devil and his Lieutenant.

My apologies if my initial statement implied that. She was talking purely on the narrative, presentation level of the movie, not the character's motivations themselves.

Then yeah I definitely agree. There was always some niggling bit in my head when I watched RotJ as a youngling, like "why is Luke doing that?" And then looking at things in RPG terms, if a player did the whole "Force Choke" thing then they'd get dark side cookies, and so players on the interwebs were saying "No he's just mind-tricking the Gamorreans so that they think they're choking, and I was like "riiiiiiight, because that makes sense."

I put it together myself after reading the "Machete Order" articles. The implication through all the dialogue, costuming, and actions that Luke takes is that he's teetering dangerously close to the dark side.

Maybe it's more readily apparent after viewing Revenge of the Sith, but still, I can't not see it now

8 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

That's not a blade, that is either a very unhealthy sausage, a partially inflated long balloon....or an adult toy of impressive length. Given the smirk on Luke's face, I'm going with the latter.

Gives new meaning to the expression "feel the power of the Force"...

50 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Gives new meaning to the expression "feel the power of the Force"...

Well, they do have some very specifically shaped....toys out there for people. I'm sure a "saber" of some kind was designed that way.

I've had this topic crop up once or twice, and from my (albeit limited) experience the problem pretty much takes care of itself when put into the often-quoted context what the blade's color represents in its user. As soon as it's a question of personality/ identity, color preference usually becomes a distant secondary thought, thankfully.

The blue saber changed to green in the third movie because the blue saber blade was washing out in the skyline for the battle on tatooine. It was a similar reason of why blue squadron changed to red squadron in the first movie. The blue trim on the x-wings would not show up on the blue screen shots for the space battle.

For what it's worth, I'm likely going to be using a blue saber for my character in a campaign that just started up. I've always been a fan of blue lightsabers, and often find myself having a hard time choosing between blue or green. Playing games like KotOR, KotOR II, and Jedi Academy, I almost always went with the classic green or blue. (Except in my darkside playthrough of KotOR, where I gave Revan Red and Purple. For reasons.)

So what colour would a Amethyst Lightsaber be?

4 hours ago, copperbell said:

So what colour would a Amethyst Lightsaber be?

Amethyst is a purple gem, it ranges from pale to dark purple.

Thanks thought it was more blueish in colour!

With the new "mood ring" lightsaber color canon a purple lightsaber is half guardian blue and half sith red... meaning mace wind was borderline guardian/evil, which is consistent with the lore about mace as in a bad@ss mofó Jedi who channeled dark emotions while managing to some how cling to the light.

7 hours ago, copperbell said:

Thanks thought it was more blueish in colour!

Nope. If you want more blue, you want Sapphire.

Random fact - my gm says my lightsaber is purple! I left it up to him

The white-tinged-with-blue-hue sabers of Luke and Obi-Wan are my favorites.

All my Jedi characters use that color.