That and sith are naturally deprived beings that are an absolute to the exclusion of everything else; Sidious was exceedingly cruel and chose to exercise that whenever possible and was argubly the most greedy of all sith lords, Vader was this bubbling mass of equal parts loathing and calculated wraith, Dooku was entirely consumed by his pride to the extent that he was unable to see himself as a pawn in the grand scheme e.g. Each Dark sider was an absolute upon themselves that became only capable of observing whether someone was of use to their personal cause or not; they had ceased to become a fully functioning person, yet through their narrow vision they achieved great personal power and cruelty to make decisions without any consideration of ethics or prior allegiance. That is what it means to be a sith, to fall into a state of depravity. E.g. A sith can only deal in absolutes. Padme wasn't with Annie, so he condemned her to die in agony as just another inconvenience that apposed him, there was no mercy granted to her due to their past relations that would have swayed a person less resolved and deprived

In term of grammer and scripting it could be tighter; but I had no problem getting the message when I was in theatre. Quite honestly; as amusing as the phrase might be after a lot of anal dissection, it did serve a purpose quite effectively; to just dismiss it as bad writing is akin to dismissing the entire saga as bad writing, as Star Wars and cheesy scripts go hand in hand.

On ‎11‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 11:31 AM, 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.

Yeah this is a good caveat. He does display a certain indifference at times and he knows he can change things just for convenience if he wants to.

To get back to the very first post:

On 22.11.2017 at 7:30 AM, Archlyte said:

The Sith can have passion, but in order to actually love anyone but yourself you have to have some ability to be selfless. So Sith cannot have love because it would make them weak. Does the Force have nothing to do with Love? If the Jedi cannot have it, and the Sith cannot have it, is the Force anti-love?

I think of all SW fandom, we're in the exact right spot to answer this one: No, because the force isn't what you get when you add Sith and Jedi together. Both are traditions of force users, but they don't make up the entirety of force users, nor do they have all the answers. They're just the traditions everyone thinks of first and because they're so strongly opposed to one another, one assumes if a trait is neither Jedi nor Sith, it doesn't exist. Force and Destiny shows that this isn't the case. There are lots and lots of peoples who found their own access to the force and explored it. And every one of those traditions has their own idea of what works, because it obviously does for them. But that doesn't mean they're the only things that work, just like the Jedi "Don't ever draw on the Dark Side" and the Sith "Light Side is for wusses" are extremes that many grey force users don't follow.

On ‎12‎/‎4‎/‎2017 at 8:23 AM, Cifer said:

To get back to the very first post:

I think of all SW fandom, we're in the exact right spot to answer this one: No, because the force isn't what you get when you add Sith and Jedi together. Both are traditions of force users, but they don't make up the entirety of force users, nor do they have all the answers. They're just the traditions everyone thinks of first and because they're so strongly opposed to one another, one assumes if a trait is neither Jedi nor Sith, it doesn't exist. Force and Destiny shows that this isn't the case. There are lots and lots of peoples who found their own access to the force and explored it. And every one of those traditions has their own idea of what works, because it obviously does for them. But that doesn't mean they're the only things that work, just like the Jedi "Don't ever draw on the Dark Side" and the Sith "Light Side is for wusses" are extremes that many grey force users don't follow.

This assumes that one acknowledges Gray Force users at all. In Official sources how many have we actually seen? Is there more than the Bendu that is actually acknowledged as Gray by something other than wookieepedia? This to me is another reason that Gray is a bad idea, because it's just one more way you can have Normal People Force Users, which simply diminishes the Force as a mystical element in the setting. Basically, if you are someone who likes the Gray Force concept it's not surprising that this question was easy for you to answer, because the nature of that argument allows for anything under the sun for the "anything goes" Force user of today's version of Star Wars thanks to the cartoon.

Okay, I must admit I have no idea where you're coming from here.

Are you talking about Legends canon? That one felt like if one ventured to a remote planet orbiting an uncharted star off a dangerous hyperspace route, one might , with luck, find a place that didn't have a tradition of force users.
Are you talking about current canon? As noted, there's the Bendu, there are the Lasat with what appears to be their own force tradition they use to navigate hyperspace, there are the Night Sisters.
Are you talking about Force & Destiny (which seems to be at least mostly kinda canon)? That builds the existence of grey characters into its very ruleset and details many additional traditions via splatbooks and archetypes.

It doesn't matter whether any of these force user traditions explicitly identify as grey, my point is: They're neither Jedi nor Sith and they're not bound by the strictures that the Jedi and Sith have fashioned for themselves. Thus "Neither the Jedi nor the Sith do it, so it's incompatible with the Force" is not an automatism.

On ‎12‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 0:24 PM, Cifer said:

Okay, I must admit I have no idea where you're coming from here.

Are you talking about Legends canon? That one felt like if one ventured to a remote planet orbiting an uncharted star off a dangerous hyperspace route, one might , with luck, find a place that didn't have a tradition of force users.
Are you talking about current canon? As noted, there's the Bendu, there are the Lasat with what appears to be their own force tradition they use to navigate hyperspace, there are the Night Sisters.
Are you talking about Force & Destiny (which seems to be at least mostly kinda canon)? That builds the existence of grey characters into its very ruleset and details many additional traditions via splatbooks and archetypes.

It doesn't matter whether any of these force user traditions explicitly identify as grey, my point is: They're neither Jedi nor Sith and they're not bound by the strictures that the Jedi and Sith have fashioned for themselves. Thus "Neither the Jedi nor the Sith do it, so it's incompatible with the Force" is not an automatism.

Well, maybe I should just say I don't believe in Gray Force users. That is a better way to put it I think.

Do you believe in Force users that are neither Jedi nor Sith?

1 hour ago, Cifer said:

Do you believe in Force users that are neither Jedi nor Sith?

You mean like wild force users? Yeah I think those are fine. What I don't like is this idea that 20,000 years of Force use and study has not revealed that the Force is actually a tripartite thing, with the Neutral being a path to Force use without consequence for actions. Whatever you do isn't going to be considered nothing, so having some aspect of the force that ignores the morality aspect so that it isn't the light side and isn't the dark side just seems bad to me. You can rejigger the Force to be some sort of universal power that refracts your personality in you, and I don't find that to be a bad concept. But the idea of gray force would seem to me to be a way to make pretty much every character who uses the Force in star wars an ignorant ideologue. Every Holocron every made is wrong, along with anyone who studied the Force. Yeah no thanks.

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

You mean like wild force users? Yeah I think those are fine.

More like Force users of different traditions, like the Zabrak monk of the beginner box. But sure, wild force users will do too.

Now, do those wild force users have to abide by the rules of the Jedi Order or the Sith Lords?

2 hours ago, Cifer said:

More like Force users of different traditions, like the Zabrak monk of the beginner box. But sure, wild force users will do too.

Now, do those wild force users have to abide by the rules of the Jedi Order or the Sith Lords?

They don't have to follow written rules that they are not aware of or have any affiliation with of course. The Sith and Jedi traditions being a case of form following function, I would hope that their teachings actually reflect what the force is, and therefore the concepts that apply there are not complete crap, and would apply to someone ignorant of their teachings. You kill your brother because he made you mad --> Dark Side move. Nobody had to write out a law for the murder to be a murder.

17 hours ago, Archlyte said:

They don't have to follow written rules that they are not aware of or have any affiliation with of course. The Sith and Jedi traditions being a case of form following function, I would hope that their teachings actually reflect what the force is, and therefore the concepts that apply there are not complete crap, and would apply to someone ignorant of their teachings. You kill your brother because he made you mad --> Dark Side move. Nobody had to write out a law for the murder to be a murder.

I disagree. Sith and Jedi tradition rules work . But that doesn't mean all parts of them are actually necessary or that they are the only possible rulesets that work. Take the Rule of Two: On its face, it says "There should be one Master and one Apprentice (and the Apprentice should usurp the Master when they can)". But there was a time before the Rule of Two and there are Sith Lords who use the loopholes of the rule to form stuff like the Inquisitorius - "These guys? Oh, they're not true Sith because we don't teach them enough to actually challenge a Sith. Totally different (except for this guy who I'm training just a little more so he can help me challenge my Master/replace my Apprentice)."

The Jedi have found a path that mostly keeps them firmly light-sided. We all know what kind of havoc one or two darksiders can wreak - would you be the one to say "Hey, maybe we overdid it a little on those rules - let's try ditching the whole 'no attachments' thing and see whether our Padawans fall or not!" Just look at our world: "Don't eat pork" was an absolutely essential rule during times when Jews and Muslims lived in hot climates and had no access to refrigeration technology. Do you see that rule going away anytime soon, now that it's no longer necessary for avoiding food poisoning?

On ‎12‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 6:03 AM, Cifer said:

I disagree. Sith and Jedi tradition rules work . But that doesn't mean all parts of them are actually necessary or that they are the only possible rulesets that work. Take the Rule of Two: On its face, it says "There should be one Master and one Apprentice (and the Apprentice should usurp the Master when they can)". But there was a time before the Rule of Two and there are Sith Lords who use the loopholes of the rule to form stuff like the Inquisitorius - "These guys? Oh, they're not true Sith because we don't teach them enough to actually challenge a Sith. Totally different (except for this guy who I'm training just a little more so he can help me challenge my Master/replace my Apprentice)."

The Jedi have found a path that mostly keeps them firmly light-sided. We all know what kind of havoc one or two darksiders can wreak - would you be the one to say "Hey, maybe we overdid it a little on those rules - let's try ditching the whole 'no attachments' thing and see whether our Padawans fall or not!" Just look at our world: "Don't eat pork" was an absolutely essential rule during times when Jews and Muslims lived in hot climates and had no access to refrigeration technology. Do you see that rule going away anytime soon, now that it's no longer necessary for avoiding food poisoning?

Ah see this is a situation where I just automatically dismiss a lot of the stuff I don't recognize and therefore it comes back to bite me in the discussions The rule of two was ridiculous to me so I don't give it much credence byond the mention of it that Yoda made, and to me I bend it to mean they use an apprentice system for each Lord. I think you are right that as a whole these codes do not encapsulate the actual form of the force, but they also do not seem to be complete contradiction to the Force as represented classically with the duality intact.

Your Pork argument would assume that something changed on the user side which changed the Force from being dangerous in some form to benign. I also reject that the dark side was once something bad but now it can be consumed with no risk. That's essentially the Gray devotee's wish, to have the pork cake and eat it too. Without consequence the Force is just power. That is very uninteresting to me.

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

Your Pork argument would assume that something changed on the user side which changed the Force from being dangerous in some form to benign. I also reject that the dark side was once something bad but now it can be consumed with no risk. That's essentially the Gray devotee's wish, to have the pork cake and eat it too. Without consequence the Force is just power. That is very uninteresting to me.

Nobody's claiming that the Force is just power (with the new canon in mind, they'd be fools to think that). But when talking about the Dark Side, there's an important difference between "bad" and "dangerous." As we've learned from multiple users of the Dark Side (Ventress in Dark Disciple and Sidious in the comics), the Dark Side must be used responsibly in order to not be consumed by it. This, to me, is very interesting, the fact that there are Force-users willing to put in the effort and discipline needed to use such a dangerous source of power. It's like Firebending, it takes incredible self-control to use it to its full extent without allowing it to become destructive. To me, those are always the best power-sources in fiction, the ones that you actually have to respect and be careful with to use for good.

1 hour ago, Nivrap said:

Nobody's claiming that the Force is just power (with the new canon in mind, they'd be fools to think that). But when talking about the Dark Side, there's an important difference between "bad" and "dangerous." As we've learned from multiple users of the Dark Side (Ventress in Dark Disciple and Sidious in the comics), the Dark Side must be used responsibly in order to not be consumed by it. This, to me, is very interesting, the fact that there are Force-users willing to put in the effort and discipline needed to use such a dangerous source of power. It's like Firebending, it takes incredible self-control to use it to its full extent without allowing it to become destructive. To me, those are always the best power-sources in fiction, the ones that you actually have to respect and be careful with to use for good.

Well let's follow that to it's natural extension. Ok so your character is a Jedi? Yes, and I also do things like kill people when it's convenient or if I feel like it. Ok so then you are a dark sider or you are heading there? No, I'm Gray. I have such great willpower that I can actually do things that are bad, but I don't fall to the dark side. Oh I might do some flavor description that makes it look like I am struggling, but I am not a dark side user.

It's a good way to make every Jedi ever look like a huge idiot. Why didn't they just do this stuff too? Surely they had good reasons for it, and if there is no consequence then why not just be a bit more conveniently emotional and vengeful?

42 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

Well let's follow that to it's natural extension. Ok so your character is a Jedi? Yes, and I also do things like kill people when it's convenient or if I feel like it. Ok so then you are a dark sider or you are heading there? No, I'm Gray. I have such great willpower that I can actually do things that are bad, but I don't fall to the dark side. Oh I might do some flavor description that makes it look like I am struggling, but I am not a dark side user.

A bad person is a bad person, regardless of what side of the Force they use. Wanton murder is no more or less likely to make you use the Dark Side than the Light, it all depends on your emotional state. What I'm saying is that the sides of the Force exist separately from societal morality. You don't have to be a mass murderer to use Lightning-hands, you just have to channel your raw emotions. Dark does not equal bad, just emotion, chaos, and change, whereas the Light is serenity, order, and stability. Even a Jedi has the potential to be a dictator.

The Rule of Two actually makes a lot of sense, but you need to go into EU sources to reveal that. Basically, the Sith are such powermongering holes of
A that they kill each other wantonly for little to no reason, and its lead to their downfall countless times. Unified, all aimed in one direction, the various Sith Empires could have utterly wiped out the Republic and the Jedi. But because two apprentices would gang up on and kill a Master, and then probably turn on each other, or one Master send his armies and fleets to attack the armies and fleets of another Master, the Sith were being bled dry of both resources and knowledge of Sith teachings, Dark Side power, and so on, making them easy pickings for the Republic and the Jedi. Darth Bane recognized this was a self-defeating path, so established the Rule of Two: No more than two Sith at any one time, a Master to embody power, an apprentice to crave it. When the apprentice is strong enough to take on his Master all on his own and win, then the apprentice is ready to become the new Master. Thus, each generation of Sith is more powerful than the one before (in theory, at least). In short, it's a nice short-circuit for the Sith's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.

As for the Dark Side itself, my philosophy is this: Palpatine speaks to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith about how similar the Jedi and Sith are, seeking greater power through the Force. The novelization takes this one step further, making them two sides of a coin: the Jedi seek wisdom and gain power, the Sith seek power and gain wisdom (though, taking the above into account, how "wise" the Sith are is up for debate). But the important part is, power in the Force is tied directly to your ability to understand it, to have and gain knowledge and wisdom. Thus, it would follow that ultimate power is gained through ultimate knowledge. The ultimate knowledge, from a philosophical standpoint, is knowledge of oneself. Thus, to achieve ultimate power in the Dark Side, a Sith must, at some point, look at himself in the mirror, realize that by any civilized metric he is EVIL , and be okay with that. One of the great truths of storytelling is that no villain looks in a mirror and sees a villain, every villain is the hero of his own story. But this is one of those times when breaking that rule makes the villain more interesting, as it makes them fully aware that, no matter how good their intentions may be, they are the bad guy of the story, and they're okay with that, because they know, with the wisdom gained from knowledge of the self, that the price was worth paying.

18 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Ah see this is a situation where I just automatically dismiss a lot of the stuff I don't recognize and therefore it comes back to bite me in the discussions The rule of two was ridiculous to me so I don't give it much credence byond the mention of it that Yoda made, and to me I bend it to mean they use an apprentice system for each Lord. I think you are right that as a whole these codes do not encapsulate the actual form of the force, but they also do not seem to be complete contradiction to the Force as represented classically with the duality intact.

Your Pork argument would assume that something changed on the user side which changed the Force from being dangerous in some form to benign. I also reject that the dark side was once something bad but now it can be consumed with no risk. That's essentially the Gray devotee's wish, to have the pork cake and eat it too. Without consequence the Force is just power. That is very uninteresting to me.

Maybe it wasn't the Force that had changed, but the culture using it. Say there was a time before the "no attachments" rule. Force aptitude is apparently genetic, so it makes perfect sense that Jedi would form families with other Jedi, in the end forming a large interconnected web of familial and romantic love. Perhaps it caused them to become too insular and they no longer empathized with the universe surrounding them. Perhaps part of the Jedi family fell to the dark side, their corruption spread through their connections and nearly tore the whole order apart. Whatever it was, when the dust settled, someone looked at the ruins and said "This wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been so extremely close to one another. New rule: No extreme emotional attachments to people!"
Does this mean every love leads to corruption? Of course not. There are lots of laws and rules that are supposed to protect against the worst case while appearing to be a hindrance in everyday life. The Jedi tried to insulate themselves against everything that could make them fall to the dark side. They are not idiots. They're just the guys who stick to the road that has proven the least dangerous while others take shortcuts - shortcuts that may be more efficient, but fraught with danger. And when you try to build an institution tasked with protecting a civilization over millenia, it absolutely makes sense to think of the long term and devise the code that is as safe from corruption and temptation as possible.
It just doesn't matter if there is one grey Force user who can keep the dark side in check - if they can't replicate that on a whole tradition without significant numbers falling, it's not something that was an option for the Jedi.

A little late to this party.

I dislike the Canon.. So I'll just come at it from the kotor 2 perspective. The jedi and the sith are not without inherent flaws. Their codes can be debated but the jedi code and mantra refuse to acknowledge what it is to live. You fight everything you are in order to be a jedi. Whereas the Sith refuse to acknowledge that the power of the force corrupts.

Love is very possible for either but ultimately it cannot exist and work properly if you reach the higher end of either example.

As for force users in general. Love is a very easy and fun thing to rp and I'd personally encourage it being included in stories.

On ‎12‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 3:08 PM, Nivrap said:

A bad person is a bad person, regardless of what side of the Force they use. Wanton murder is no more or less likely to make you use the Dark Side than the Light, it all depends on your emotional state. What I'm saying is that the sides of the Force exist separately from societal morality. You don't have to be a mass murderer to use Lightning-hands, you just have to channel your raw emotions. Dark does not equal bad, just emotion, chaos, and change, whereas the Light is serenity, order, and stability. Even a Jedi has the potential to be a dictator.

I'm confused. Aren't the Dark Side users in this setting the bad guys? I remember Yoda warning Luke about the Dark Side, but why would he warn him if really you can be a bad guy and the Force doesn't recognize it? So do you simply deny the existence of the Dark Side?

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

I'm confused. Aren't the Dark Side users in this setting the bad guys? I remember Yoda warning Luke about the Dark Side, but why would he warn him if really you can be a bad guy and the Force doesn't recognize it? So do you simply deny the existence of the Dark Side?

Yoda warns Luke about the Dark Side because that's part of his religion. Even he knew he was wrong, as he and the rest of the Council had previously hired Ventress to try to assassinate Dooku. Force-users, regardless of what religion they follow, have greater upper limits for how good or evil they can be compared to normal people, but they can all be good or evil.

9 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I'm confused. Aren't the Dark Side users in this setting the bad guys? I remember Yoda warning Luke about the Dark Side, but why would he warn him if really you can be a bad guy and the Force doesn't recognize it? So do you simply deny the existence of the Dark Side?

You can be a good guy without being a force user. Wedge, Hera, Chewie and Akbar are all considered good people and heroes. None of them have the force or the ability to feel the light side or the dark side. Likewise Tarkin and Hux are monsters without being force users.

And in regards to dark side users being the bad guys, I'm going to qoute Zangief "Just because you're Bad Guy, doesn't mean you have to be a bad guy." being seen as evil by a largely unknowable cosmic force isn't the same as being a **** to everyone.

Eh, I'm not convinced. I think there's a feedback loop - certain behaviours feed the Dark Side and the Dark Side feeds certain behaviour (said behaviour being roughly under the purview of "evil stuff"), which is precisely why it's so hard to break away from the Dark Side once it has really taken hold. Going by the game mechanics and parts of the lore, it's possible to strike a balance, but once you're fully consumed by the dark side, you will neither be a Good Guy nor a good guy.

Pretty much this. Pretty much anyone who falls to the darkside becomes a twisted parody of who they once were; superior in power and ability to act without moral restraint, but incapable of seeing other people as obstructions or a resource to be used and discarded. Dooku went from a man running an anti-republic rebellion to a full on manipulative cur, Vader went from loving Padme unconditionally, to viciously crushing her windpipe because she brought Obi-Wan to destroy him. To give into the darkside is to give into your dark depravities and thus become stronger by becoming unrestricted, but that knowledge comes with a deep emotional price.

Of course non-force users can be good and bad, and Jedi can be good and bad, just people of Darkside traditions only tend to be bad because their entire mojo is giving into the darkside and letting the unrestrained power flow through them, to physically rend the force instead of following it's flow.

Now, the Jedi aren't the only authority of the force, but that doesn't mean the sith are some mystical shining diamonds in the rough. Almost all of them were unconditionally evil and prone to excessive bouts of unconditional cruelty made manifest by their powers. You don't gain a separate amount of powers or technique by falling to the dark side, you become a living embodiment of all that is horrid about the universe and quite frankly; it feels so good. Being a sith is to dive headlong into that pool and never come back up. The only reason that Vader was able to come back was that he found that little spark of hope and had it nurtured, until he pulled himself out of that dark place and struck down the most evil man in the galaxy.

KOTOR 2 was a fun game, but I wasn't satisfied with it's explanation; Traya was only ever a darkside user who came back to the light because her power was stripped from her forcing her to become cold turkey. Her point was it wasn't enough to be right, sometimes you have to make choices that don't sit right with you immediately. The Jedi within that setting were ignorant fools who didn't even consider the exiles power; they didn't understand it therefore it was a threat that had to be destroyed one way or another, it's that kind of pig headed thinking that can lose them the war. But ultimately Traya wasn't right either and would serve as the final test for the Exile; whether they would be ready to face the true evil laying in the borders beyond.

On 11/22/2017 at 2:27 AM, Archlyte said:

I have trouble with the idea that the Jedi order as we saw it was vastly different from , well what time period was it doing really great? 10 years before? 100 years before? George made reference to us seeing the Jedi "in their prime" which doesn't sound like he was describing the order in a period of crapping out. I imagine most of this knowledge about how ineffective the Jedi order has become has to come from like comic books or something because none of it is apparent from the movies. Some of these confident summations sound like ordained fact that was just extrapolations from the movies. So like they show mace Windu in the movie with his hand near his mouth, and Joe Pulp writes the fifth book in the Sithsaber Shadowplot Series and says he's an ex-smoker. Then people who have their noses in that lore all the time give it a chapter and verse code so that it can be worked into sermons.

I don't mind if that is your opinion based on this extraneous lore, but I don't think it's established as fact any where that the Jedi just sucked at their jobs at that time. In the movies they seem to be doing ok until the plot is enacted. If the Sith cloud on the force or whatever is canon that makes the Jedi blind to dark side people doing bad crap, that's really all the plot armor that Palpatine needed. How were they supposed to get beyond that? Given the size of their overall job and situation.

Based on the prequel films alone I could interpret it either way. Based on Lucas' early comments I would assume the Jedi are in their prime. However, there are statements by Obi-Wan that heavily imply deep personal regrets over failures by two key members of the Jedi High Council. Alone that could be left to interpretation as well. But, there is a 3-episode arc with Yoda at the end of the last season of The Clone Wars, which Lucas retained the final word over, in which Yoda concludes the order lost its way, was blinded by its own arrogance, and had an inflexible and limited perspective if the force. It may ruffle some feathers and some may wish to dismiss it as a result, but it was very well done and added depth to the saga as a whole. And, as Lucas approved it, its his latter word on the subject (IMO).

On 11/22/2017 at 2:27 AM, Archlyte said:

I have trouble with the idea that the Jedi order as we saw it was vastly different from , well what time period was it doing really great? 10 years before? 100 years before? George made reference to us seeing the Jedi "in their prime" which doesn't sound like he was describing the order in a period of crapping out. I imagine most of this knowledge about how ineffective the Jedi order has become has to come from like comic books or something because none of it is apparent from the movies. Some of these confident summations sound like ordained fact that was just extrapolations from the movies. So like they show mace Windu in the movie with his hand near his mouth, and Joe Pulp writes the fifth book in the Sithsaber Shadowplot Series and says he's an ex-smoker. Then people who have their noses in that lore all the time give it a chapter and verse code so that it can be worked into sermons.

I don't mind if that is your opinion based on this extraneous lore, but I don't think it's established as fact any where that the Jedi just sucked at their jobs at that time. In the movies they seem to be doing ok until the plot is enacted. If the Sith cloud on the force or whatever is canon that makes the Jedi blind to dark side people doing bad crap, that's really all the plot armor that Palpatine needed. How were they supposed to get beyond that? Given the size of their overall job and situation.

Based on the prequel films alone I could interpret it either way. Based on Lucas' early comments I would assume the Jedi are in their prime. However, there are statements by Obi-Wan and Yoda that heavily imply deep personal regrets over failures by two key members of the Jedi High Council. Alone that could be left to interpretation as well. But, there is a 3-episode arc with Yoda at the end of the last season of The Clone Wars, which Lucas retained the final word over, in which Yoda concludes the order lost its way, was blinded by its own arrogance, and had an inflexible and limited perspective of the force. It may ruffle some feathers and some may wish to dismiss it as a result, but it was very well done and added depth to the saga as a whole. And, as Lucas approved it, its his latter word on the subject (IMO).