Jedi cannot love .... hmmm

By Archlyte, in Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG

17 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Kind of.
Or to quote Obi-Wan, "had you said the word, I would have left the jedi order", it's not like membership in the jedi order is mandatory. Furthermore Obi-Wan and Ahsoka both seemed to have been pretty aware of Anakin's relationship with Padme. They just looked elsewhere. That was not what they were supposed to do, but that is how the order seemed to be handling this kind of things for quite a while.

This is one of the episodes I have actually watched, and yeah that part with Anakin was great lol.

7 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

SEA and Ferret: Ok I see. Yeah I think from a storytelling and gaming perspective it's a lot easier to let the characters be human but to have them striving for an ideal. I think most people can understand that because it's what many people do in their lives and is a transcendent device. I like the view you guys have on this and I think I will adjust my portrayal of the Jedi to be more in alignment with this idea. It also makes me think that there is room for stories about Jedi zealots who are so disconnected from emotion that they essentially serve as antagonists to the more human characters, which I think is what the Prequels touched on a little bit but not really in an effective way.

That zealot group would be a nice way to have them perhaps fall to the Dark potentially. That whole "You must sever all emotions...and you must do so by killing your wife/child/father" is pretty much the route they took with Kylo Ren really. His emotional attachments to his father, were tearing him apart, but when he killed him, he felt it had severed his emotions. "The thing I loved is now dead, so now love is dead, so now I am free" kind of twisted logic that the Dark Side loves. That's a really nice idea.

3 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

That zealot group would be a nice way to have them perhaps fall to the Dark potentially. That whole "You must sever all emotions...and you must do so by killing your wife/child/father" is pretty much the route they took with Kylo Ren really. His emotional attachments to his father, were tearing him apart, but when he killed him, he felt it had severed his emotions. "The thing I loved is now dead, so now love is dead, so now I am free" kind of twisted logic that the Dark Side loves. That's a really nice idea.

Hey thanks. Yeah I was thinking that there are some possibilities there for an interesting schism or perhaps more depending.

33 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

Hey thanks. Yeah I was thinking that there are some possibilities there for an interesting schism or perhaps more depending.

I definitely think it's fertile ground for some good storytelling, though if you do go that route, be prepared for some table debates that amount to what's gone on in this thread :P

Also, just as a side bit, Obi-Wan does say "Only Sith deal in absolutes" So you know, the absolute obliteration of all emotions doesn't feel very Jedi by that statement either.

11 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Also, just as a side bit, Obi-Wan does say "Only Sith deal in absolutes" So you know, the absolute obliteration of all emotions doesn't feel very Jedi by that statement either.

But that statement is in and of itself an absolute statement... so the Jedi deal in them too I guess Obi-Wan.

1 hour ago, Shlambate said:

But that statement is in and of itself an absolute statement... so the Jedi deal in them too I guess Obi-Wan.

Or Obi-Wan is a Sith.

2 hours ago, Shlambate said:

But that statement is in and of itself an absolute statement... so the Jedi deal in them too I guess Obi-Wan.

I'm sure it was true enough, from a certain point of view.

4 hours ago, Shlambate said:

But that statement is in and of itself an absolute statement... so the Jedi deal in them too I guess Obi-Wan.

The context of their conversation makes it clear that he's talking about Anakin's allegiance, not making a grand statement that's to be taken literally. If everyone who isn't on his side is an enemy, then he's not a Jedi anymore but a Sith - that's the gist of it.

Edited by Stan Fresh

I don't see how this can be controversial A Jedi in love will do anything to protect the loved one. As we saw, this can create Darth Vader-scale evil. The whole point GL was making with his astoundingly complex Star Wars saga. Episode I, Qui-gon tells us. I can't fight a war for you. Anakin is appalled an enraged at the carnage wreaked on his beloved 501st

Yeah I think that the problem with the idea of a completely stoic Jedi isn't that that in and of itself it is wrong to be stoic, but that we sense that it isn't interesting. Our story-laden lives and sense of story itself kind of reels at the idea of heroes you can't love, and who can't love you back. I think this is where the idea comes from that the Jedi (as an organization) in the prequels are basically victims of their own non-emotional state. I think it's natural to try and wonder why they would be in this state that we don't really like, and so the justification that the Jedi have become something they shouldn't arises. I agree that the Jedi became something they shouldn't have become, but I think that was in the representation of them as completely stoic at all. In this collection of stories which is so emotional at its core, making the ultimate good guys not able to have emotions just sucks.

Edited by Archlyte

Well yeah, stoic by the rules jedi are pretty boring. That's why they're not really the protagonists. Qui Gon follows his own path, Obi-Wan tries to be more orthodox but he also goes his own way. Anakin very much dies his own thing, Ahsoka ditches being a Jedi, Kannan was a padawan who turned to petty crime and Ezra is pretty **** meh. We don't even get an indication that Luke is ever told the Jedi code, he does come the closest to falling when his attachment is brought up though.

Other Jedi, the ones who strictly adhere to the codes, are background characters. They're not main characters who have an interesting personal journey because they're lacking a interesting personality.

Depending how far back ones goes the Jedi used to be allowed to marry and have children. It seems this changed sometime around the era of KOTOR/SWTOR/the Shan line specifically. If memory serves it was Satele's mother who gave her up to the Jedi and took a break from the order as well. Eventually she returned but Satele never knew this relationship. Furthermore Satele made a baby with the republic trooper we often see in cut scenes and her son became a Republic Intelligence Agent. After Luke had pummeled Palps, depending on your source, the New Jedi Order was allowed to do the same again as we saw with Luke and Mara.

Lucas has also come out, around TPM in an interview saying that Jedi do in fact hit it. This part sucks because we never get the idea on screen this happens.

6 hours ago, ASCI Blue said:

Lucas has also come out, around TPM in an interview saying that Jedi do in fact hit it. This part sucks because we never get the idea on screen this happens.

I feel like canon has since contradicted his statements (about many things), since Ki-Adi-Mundi is the exception to the rule in that he's allowed to mate since his species has a low birth rate.

21 minutes ago, Nivrap said:

I feel like canon has since contradicted his statements (about many things), since Ki-Adi-Mundi is the exception to the rule in that he's allowed to mate since his species has a low birth rate.

Wasn't that from before TPM even was released?

And having spouses and children is way beyond not being celibate.

Edited by Stan Fresh
58 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Wasn't that from before TPM even was released?

And having spouses and children is way beyond not being celibate.

Considering both Anakin and Padme knew that Anakin would be expelled if it was discovered that he had gotten Padme pregnant, I think it's safe to say that sexual relations are discouraged within the Jedi Order. It may not be explicitly stated, but we can draw assumptions based on what we know about the Order.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1989505.stm (2002)

"But Lucas revealed that despite their monastic regime, Jedi were permitted to have sex.

"Jedi Knights aren't celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships."

So in theory as long as there is no possession or attachment Jedi could even be married.

I also disagree with this because virtually everything we see on screen bellows otherwise.

Been reading through this thread and it’s pretty interesting, I’ve got to say I prefer the idea of the force as a living thing with a will of its own, as @KungFuFerret puts it but I’m not entirely sure I favor the idea of the force as twin siblings who are diametrically opposed and fighting with one another, despite the fact that that episode of clone wars portrayed it that way lol.

While reading over this I couldn’t help but think of that episode of enterprise with the strange cobweb like organism that tried to form neural links with the crew in the ships cargo hold. Individually it was capable of acting as an independent entity but once it was returned to its home planet it rejoined the whole and then became indistinguishable from the single organism that made up the planet.

Something similar to this would be the swamp forest that we saw in the avatar the last air bender serries, where the forest had many individual aspects throughout but was ultimately interlinked with the single giant tree at its center.

I think the way I like to consider the force, after reading this thread, is that it is a single group organism made up of the collective wills of all living being that exist and that have existed before, and that as a whole entity it is primarily neutral, but on an individual level it can behave contrary to its other selves, and that those individual selves react in accordance with how it has been treated. Much like a dog, no matter how nice and kind, will become cruel and aggressive if beaten, aspects of the force will grow violent when it is abused, leading to what we know are dark side users, and dark side vergences.

Thoughts on this are not much more developed than this at the moment but I thought it was an interesting concept I wanted to share.

Personally, I don't attach a lot of weight to Luca's words (or indeed, most people with a particular attachment to their own product line) in regards to statements like this. They tend to get way too precious and attach additional significance to their products that sometimes didn't even exist at the time of publishing. This is the same guy who will randomly half **** names if he feels annoyed in an interview, so in all honesty suggesting that Star Wars and Luca's is the bible is contradictory; he is a man who regularly re-writes the bible according to whim and as such I am not inclined to trust an interview very much.

1 hour ago, LordBritish said:

Personally, I don't attach a lot of weight to Luca's words (or indeed, most people with a particular attachment to their own product line) in regards to statements like this. They tend to get way too precious and attach additional significance to their products that sometimes didn't even exist at the time of publishing. This is the same guy who will randomly half **** names if he feels annoyed in an interview, so in all honesty suggesting that Star Wars and Luca's is the bible is contradictory; he is a man who regularly re-writes the bible according to whim and as such I am not inclined to trust an interview very much.

While I think his statements are important, I don't think word-of-god has any real value when it comes to determining what is and isn't canon. For instance, the modern canon interpretation of how the Force works is very different from how George said it works in old interviews.

28 minutes ago, Nivrap said:

While I think his statements are important, I don't think word-of-god has any real value when it comes to determining what is and isn't canon. For instance, the modern canon interpretation of how the Force works is very different from how George said it works in old interviews.

Fair play, but as said I do not trust interviews as far as actual rules go. People are incredibly fickle beings by their very nature, anything that isn't written down is subject to change at a whim thus I would consider anything said within such a setting as amusing at best; trival tosh at worst.

28 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

Fair play, but as said I do not trust interviews as far as actual rules go. People are incredibly fickle beings by their very nature, anything that isn't written down is subject to change at a whim thus I would consider anything said within such a setting as amusing at best; trival tosh at worst.

That's... what I said.

11 minutes ago, Nivrap said:

That's... what I said.

And I repeated it. ^__^ We are in agreement.

On 11/24/2017 at 2:43 AM, Stan Fresh said:

The context of their conversation makes it clear that he's talking about Anakin's allegiance, not making a grand statement that's to be taken literally. If everyone who isn't on his side is an enemy, then he's not a Jedi anymore but a Sith - that's the gist of it.

Let's just admit it was bad writing.

4 minutes ago, Deathseed said:

Let's just admit it was bad writing.

I ADMIT NOTHING!

Seriously though, I think a lot of geeks' tendency to take dialogue overly literally and discount theme, context, delivery, etc. contributes to this particular mess.