Lit From Endor to Exegol - The State of the Galaxy Discussion Thread (Tagged Victory's Price Spoilers)

Since Coruscant is no longer the throne world of the Old Republic, is it possible it's now the throneworld of the Sith? Perhaps even first settled there?

It makes you wonder what the Old Republic's capital was.

Corellia? Alderaan?

May it have even been NOT IN THE CORE?

 

Before in legend it was maybe hundreds, or even millions of individual Sith Lord, with each controlling a sector or half a sector, or a quarter of a sector. They were all Siths, but none of them will recognize the authority of another.

A Galactic Empire didn't exist. Sith control of the galaxy did.... In legend.

 

I know you're probably just messing with Jello here, but in fact the OR capital probably was Coruscant, which is why the Sith takeover there was the "devastating ouster" that it was. (The TFA:VD mentions that Coruscant had been the "capital of galactic politics" for "millennia" before the NR.)

 

I dunno, an ecumenopolis is almost the antithesis of what you'd think the Jedi would cultivate as a headquarters for the galaxy versus a pastoral world like Chandrilla.

 

. . . because big cities are inherently evil? I've never understood the desire to move the Jedi off Coruscant (and that's not a slight against you Charles, Legends and Canon seem strangely against the Jedi living there as well).

 

Well, in the simple terms, the Jedi Knights are an organization which appears to be a ecologically-friendly pantheist religion.

"It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, binds us, and holds the galaxy together."

"Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship."

We don't get many statements about the nature of the Force but when we encounter Obi-Wan and Yoda they are in naturalistic places far from civilization. Cities are far from inherently evil but they're man made, have very little organic matter but people, and are usually quite apart from anything resembling natural ecology.

In Legends, Dantooine, Ossus, and Tython feel like "real" Jedi locations where one can bond with the Force.

Coruscant and the Jedi Temple, by contrast, feel like the Jedi just chose a place right next to the political heart of the galaxy.

In canon, this is even made, well, canon, by the fact the Jedi unknowingly built their Temple over a Sith Temple and clouded their vision of the Force.

This is all very much the "language of cinema" and me taking the movies too seriously (what? NEVER!) since they actually got me involved in the naturalist sects of Christianity and pantheism which I believe in but I always felt Coruscant was about as fundamentally anti-Jedi a sort of world as you could find. A world of noise, materialism, power-jockeying, and industry.

 

The part about the Jedi getting too involved with politics or materialism I can sort of understand. The Prequels and the KOTOR comics seem to make the point that the Jedi should humble themselves a bit more (the KOTOR comics are to this day the ONLY Star Wars work that question or deconstruct the Jedi without being too heavy handed IMO). The part about how the Jedi should be close to "nature" I disagree with.

You say "Cities are far from inherently evil but they're man made, have very little organic matter but people, and are usually quite apart from anything resembling natural ecology."

Don't people count as living things? With a population of 1 trillion (not to mention creatures such as duracrete slugs), is not Coruscant teeming with just as much life as Dagobah, if not more?

This may be my personal bias, but I've always seen Star Wars as having a message that technology and nature/religion/what have you can coexist. The "technological terror" of the Death Star may have been defeated when Luke turned off his targeting computer and trusted in the Force, but he was still flying a space ship. The primitive Ewoks may have triumphed over the faceless Imperial walkers, but our heroes on the ground at Endor still used blasters and had two droids with them.

So while I can understand the sentiment that Jedi should be close to nature, I don't think they need to be Luddites who reject a planet just because technology is there.

 

I think there's a fundamental difference between rejecting technology and not making it something you're completely dependent on.

There's actually a good comparison in the movies with the Rebel Alliance and Empire. The Rebellion have a "closer to the galaxy" merging of technology and nature with Yavin IV's base and Hoth as they incorporate nature into their bases. They try not to disrupt the local ecosystems and work with things like Tauntauns and other animals as well as machinery. The Empire, by contrast, just has their dead soulless machinery.

Interestingly, one of the West End Games books comments on the fact Jedi love technology but not want to become utterly dependent on it while the Empire embraces it to the exclusion of all else.

I don't necessarily think this is a Real Life lesson to follow but I think it's something which fits the movies as well as Jedi.

 

Random Factoid: But the idea of ecumenopolises as being something inherently "off" is something which has come up several times in their depictions with one interesting large debate occurring when DOCTOR WHO (9th Doctor) had him visit Earth which had become one.

A lot of people gave it flack because they saw it as horrifying for the utter destruction of Earth's environments save for people and presumed housecats (who evolve into their own race).

Ecumenopolises cannot, yet, scientifically exist but it is a idea that eventually everything green is paved over for parking lots. I tend to think the Jedi are like Alderaanians in they'd rather have cities surrounded by and incorporating nature than creating an urban eco-system.

Take note: I can also very easily see Jedi who argue there's no such thing as a "unnatural" environment as humans and cities are really no different than ant hills and beehives. Just they're potentially all consuming ones.

 

I'd rather it be like Legends where the Jedi had a number of temples on different planets, including Coruscant. While ONLY having a temple on Coruscant could make it seem elitist and like the Jedi don't care about the rest of the galaxy, the Jedi outright AVOIDING Coruscant sends some bad messages. The first is the whole "nature = good, technology = bad" thing I mentioned. The second is that it plays into the idea that Coruscant is an inherently evil planet (when people like Dexter and the fireworks at the end of ROTJ show plenty of decent people live there.) The third is that to me it seems too isolationist.

"Now that we've sworn to guard and protect this Republic, let's all agree to never set foot on the planet it calls home! I mean, we COULD go there to advise and guide this democracy, or at the very least clean out the undercity. But where would you expect to find an Order dedicated to helping people, a planet where billions of people live, or in a deserted jungle far away from anyone who might need us? As the guardians of civilization, it is our duty to get as far away from it as possible!"

 

It's funny you know, I have seen people complaining that they are to involved in politics; not enough involved in politics; should never taken up arms; should have been more proactive; etc. People seems to agree that they where doing things wrong but can't agree on what exactly what they did wrong and how it should have been fixed

Fully agree.

 

Hindsight is 20/20 and people always say go left when it turns out right was wrong.

In the case of the canon Jedi Order, they seem to have been completely uninterested in the politics of the Republic and remained a nonentity up until Bloodline.

If they'd been there, would the galaxy have been different?

However, it's clear the Jedi Order were pretty much propping up the Republic's corruption in the Prequels.

I admit, I am hoping we'll see some more survivors of Luke's Jedi Order pop up, Kanan style, once the Sequel Trilogy is over.

 

I too am very curious to see what they do with Luke's Jedi. I've said it before, but I think it will be similar to the Pre TPM or Pre AOTC stuff we got: There's no galaxy spanning war, so instead we got lots of stories about Jedi going on adventures and stopping smaller problems. I suspect this might eventually contradict Bloodline a bit. Even if the new Jedi stay out of politics, they can't be a "nonentity" if they've been on enough planet hopping adventures to fill whole books. But the answer to this conundrum is the same answer I give when people ask why Rey thought Luke Skywalker was just a legend: the Galaxy is a big place.

 

I am sorry to tell you this about Luke's Jedi, but

 

At least they didn't get shaped by the Vong, turned into bughuggers or had Force induced hallucinations that made them think all of their friends were impostors

Or did they?

A lot could have happened in 5 to 30 ABY.

 

Gamiel

Well yeah, I know they're dead, but I enjoyed plenty of Clone Wars stories even knowing most of those characters were doomed. Likewise, I still want to see stories of Luke's Jedi adventuring, or at least actually doing something, and not just sitting around waiting for Jedi Purge 2: First Order Boogaloo.

 

Theoretically they could pull an Ahsoka again and have some fan favourite survive.
Maybe Luke sent them on another Outbound Flight so that they are unavailable to fight Snoke, yet still alive on some dreadnought in hyperspace.
Despite my post above, I don' think I can take another set of Jedi being abused by evil extragalactic invasion.

 

Mind you, Luke's Academy is destroyed.

But I can't believe ALL JEDI were at it.

Dozens may have been elsewhere.

 

It's also possible The Last Jedi is merely marketing in the larger expanded universe.

We're almost certainly getting STAR WARS: RESISTANCE after this season of Rebels.

To me, that means we'll probably see someone like Ezra as a Jedi Master.

 

This is the problem I have with that....

Supposedly in the 20 or so years that since RoTJ and Luke establishes his academy but no one ever graduated and went out into the galaxy and started doing Jedi do gooding. I am on the side that there are a few dozen out there but that then raises the question where are they and what are they doing?? Wouldn't at least a few be allied with the Resistance??

 

Well that's the nature of the EU.

Corran Horn was always at the Jedi Academy, we just never saw him until I, Jedi.