Books The Official TARKIN by James Luceno Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Fixed

 

I would love to see some ex-Separatist military guys join the rebellion.

 

I usually hate digging up earlier discussions, but I had a scary experience on YouTube just now.

I wanted to find a video of the Blu-ray "NOOOOOOOOO!" in ROTJ, and the comments had people all taking about Anakin beating... Sidious.

In the context of a ROTJ discussion, the use of that name bothered me.

 

I use Sidious and Palpatine interchangeably, but I almost always choose "Palpatine" when talking about ROTS and beyond; I only use "Sidious" when referring to him in TPM, AOTC, and TCW, and sometimes not even then.

 

I think Palpatine viewed the Darth title largely the same way Dooku did--useful toward certain ends, but subservient to his public persona, which was equally useful if not moreso. And both, ultimately, were just that: resources to be exploited where appropriate.

 

The whole Sidious thing was just a phase. Palpatine was a Sith only ironically. The Banite Order served him with its Grand Plan, not the other way around.

 

We of the old school think that...

Today's YouTube kids clearly think his name is Sidious.

 

Wait I thought I was of the new school, with RotS being the only film I was old enough to see in the theatres (it was awesome by the way, lasers pew pew, sabers tzing tzing, Ian McDiarmid unlimited power etc)

 

Funnily enough, unless I'm forgetting something, the name "Palpatine" is never spoken in the OT.

 

No, you're right. He's just "the Emperor," "My Master," or "Your Highness."

 

Nah, at this point you're still old school if you came on board before 2005. True new school is anyone who has only ever experienced the six films as a single received unit.

Old school used to be pre-1999--people who had seen the OT without the PT being around at all--but that ship has clearly sailed.

Phase I: 1977-83: Saw the OT individually as they came out or at least the first two before ROTJ.
Phase II: 1983-1999: Saw the OT as a received unit but before the PT.
Phase III: 1999-2005: Saw the PT as they came out.
Phase IV: 2005-Present. Saw the six films after they were all released.
You could even make a case for a Phase V--kids who have only seen TCW--but I don't want to go there just yet.

 

Huh, that makes me a Phase II (since I was born in '87).

 

This is why I'm still half-expecting "Sidious" to be used way more in NEU-- as if a kid has grown up without any exposure to the old EU, then they've no reason to preference either name based on the PT itself, and with how ROTS ends... it's somewhat unsurprising if kids think "Darth Sidious" is now ascendant and the principle persona going forward.

Edit: Going by Valin_Kenobi I guess this would mean the Phase III people.

 

Yeah, that's me as well. Around here that would correspond to the Bantam/WEG/X-Wing generation, whereas III would be something like NJO/Original Clone Wars/Denning.

 

My first EU years were Jude Watson, TPM era novels and KOTOR (once I got it to work about half a year after getting it).

 

In any event, I'd say we've got the workings of a great new board caste system on our hands.

 

Not to open a viewing order war, but I suppose it still depends which trilogy you see first. Clearly the title is never used in the OT but a kid is unlikely to notice this absence if they've just watched three movies and TCW where everyone is going SIDIOUS SIDIOUS SIDIOUS morning, noon, and night. But if you saw the OT first, even today, you might be more likely to view them as two separate personae.

I'm totally cool with the title appearing in OT-era stuff as long as it's contextually appropriate--third-person narrative text, private scenes between Vader and Sidious, and so on. But even under G-canon-only rules it doesn't seem like anyone knows he's a Sith, since Vader is clearly THE DLotS, and whether they even know he's a darksider is debatable. So I don't want the title popping up in every conversation between, say, Vader and some random officer, the way the Neimoidians toss it around in the PT.

That being said, the authors are all our age or older, and mainly the same ones that have been writing LU anyway, so I wouldn't worry about the nomenclature changing overnight, if at all.

Well, I was considering it from a movie-and-TV angle. Doing the same thing for EU groupings would definitely be a different animal. Along the lines of Marvel, Bantam/DH, NJO, post-NJO/TCW, NU.

And it's a moving goalpost since old-school has to absorb more and more over time, since it's just anything that isn't the newest school and calling an intermediate category "middle school" doesn't seem right.

*looks at my registration date*

 

Newbies. The both o' ya.

 

I'll have to come up with zingier names for them if this is going to become a thing.

 

Jesus, really? But that's all I have.

Well, that and my drastically higher Like-to-Post ratio.

 

Change mine a year forward, so that I can pretend I never posted in LACWAC.

Actually, I don't think I post any differently now. Forget it.

 

Egads, would you really want to have to deal with a hypern00b that had posted 12,463 times in their first 24hrs?

It'd open Pandora's Box, man. Talk about the mother of all ego trips, you'd be making him into, like, the First Messiah of the Fifth Phase.