Spoilers What do casual fans get wrong about Star Wars?

Kinda problematic to cheat at dice for your personal benefit, no matter how many "whataboutisms" you try to hide behind.

Qui-gon respected, supported, and participated in the slave trade, no matter how you try to talk around it. Of course, Anakin had more freedom as a slave on Tatooine than he did as a Jedi student, anyway.
You're claiming that cheating at dice to free slaves is bad and that slaves are better off enslaved than joining a voluntary religious order.

And Qui-Gon did not respect, support, or participate in the slave trade. Anakin was freed, period. He could have done anything with his life, the Jedi didn't even want to accept him to begin with.
 

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Kinda problematic to cheat at dice for your personal benefit, no matter how many "whataboutisms" you try to hide behind.

Qui-gon respected, supported, and participated in the slave trade, no matter how you try to talk around it. Of course, Anakin had more freedom as a slave on Tatooine than he did as a Jedi student, anyway.
Nonsense. Qui Gon respected local customs because he did not have the authority to subvert them -- and yet tried anyway by cheating. Your assessment of the situation is both factually incorrect and obviously intentionally inflammatory.
 

Kinda problematic to cheat at dice for your personal benefit, no matter how many "whataboutisms" you try to hide behind.

Mod note:
Intentionally or not, this assertion is inflammatory - either you mean it seriously, which is going to make people very uncomfortable, or you aren't serious, and then it looks like trolling.

I'm going to ask folks to back away from this, and not engage with it.

Your continued participation in this discussion will depend on you looking like you care more about people than you care about the integrity of dice games.
 

Ugh, yeah, the "no attachments" rule was poorly explained and badly presented. There is no way you could ever avoid anything that could possibly lure you to the Dark Side anyways! And yeah, at no point in the original trilogy did Ben or Yoda say "now Luke, no attachments to anyone, you hear, or you'll end up like your old man!".
Sure, but that's the easiest no-prize ever. "That 'no attachments' bit sure came back to bite us in the posterior. Maybe ease up on that a bit when we reboot?"
 

Sure, but that's the easiest no-prize ever. "That 'no attachments' bit sure came back to bite us in the posterior. Maybe ease up on that a bit when we reboot?"
Maybe that's what happened. But I find it hard to believe that they didn't have major problems with this rule of theirs before in the thousands of years the Jedi Order has existed.
 

Also, if anyone recognize the story I'm talking about and can help me identify it, that'd be awesome. The idea clearly stuck with me, even if the name did not. I can't have been more than 18 when I read it, so it must have been published no later than 1994 (and probably earlier to account for translation and such).
That might actually be Asimov's original Foundation novel (which is really a connected set of shorter stories). The middle part of the book -- where the Foundation manifests as a group of traders in high technology but who don't assimilate with the locals -- sounds much like what you're describing.

I also wonder if that story isn't part of where Games Workshop got the Rogue Trader trope that eventually exploded into the 40k universe. I'm sure it's not the primary influence, but perhaps a part.
 

Taking this seriously for a second: once, long ago, I read a science fiction novel set on a world which had an extremely stratified society, likely as a commentary on colonialism. I only vaguely recall the novel (I thought it was an Asimov novel but it doesn't seem that way as I look at his bibliography), but basically you had a small population of highly technologically advanced people controlling a whole planet, with extremely strict laws on interaction (e.g. the "lessers" weren't even allowed to talk to or look at the ruling class). But controlling a whole planet of people was a bit too hard logistically, so they recruited intermediaries from among the conquered population by administering tests to get the best and brightest to work for them, still in subservient roles but with immensely higher standards of living than the common population. However, these intermediaries were expected to dedicate themselves to service, and were not allowed to have children or marry. Over the course of the novel, it turned out that this was a sneaky eugenics program: by recruiting the smart and ambitious ones and then forbidding them from having children, the idea was to remove those traits from the gene pool (it didn't work out very well).

Anyhow, when Attack of the Clones talked about Jedi not being allowed to marry or have emotional attachments, I thought of that story. Force sensitivity is clearly a genetic trait, and if you recruit the force sensitive babies to your weird space wizard cult and forbid, or at least de-incentivize, children, that's not going to be good for the prevalence of force sensitivity in the long run.

Also, if anyone recognize the story I'm talking about and can help me identify it, that'd be awesome. The idea clearly stuck with me, even if the name did not. I can't have been more than 18 when I read it, so it must have been published no later than 1994 (and probably earlier to account for translation and such).
If it is a half-remembered Asimov it might possibly be The Naked Sun. Which was a sequel to The Caves of Steel, some of which found its way into the I Robot movie.
 

I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that the casuals understand one very important thing about Star Wars that the hardcore fans don't: the movies are an entertaining way to spend a couple hours at a time and aren't really anything more than that.
We've already had a mod asking us not to disparage casuals, please don't do the same thing for those who are deep into the fandom. We try not to fandom-shame here.

In the words of Harrison Ford, as remembered by Mark Hamill, "It ain't that kind of movie, kid." A lot of people seem to forget Star Wars was never meant to be taken any more seriously than an episode of Flash Gordon. Stop looking for deeper meanings behind the Force, the sentience of droids, or trying to explain parsecs are a unit of distance in regards to the Kessel one and just enjoy the spectacle.
So the intent making the first movie, which at the time was unknown if it would be a success or have any sequels, trumps anything past that? There's no way that a course can change, that deeper meanings can later be built in or emerge?

I'll have to disagree with you.
 


That might actually be Asimov's original Foundation novel (which is really a connected set of shorter stories). The middle part of the book -- where the Foundation manifests as a group of traders in high technology but who don't assimilate with the locals -- sounds much like what you're describing.
This book was written from the perspective of one of the "intermediaries" IIRC, or at least someone who aspired to be one until he learned what a-holes the colonizers were. The Foundation books, as I recall, are all from the perspective of Foundation people.

I think there may have been an element of false help from the colonizers as well. Something like "We're here to help you with this ecological problem you're having", and then it turns out they actually caused it.

If it is a half-remembered Asimov it might possibly be The Naked Sun. Which was a sequel to The Caves of Steel, some of which found its way into the I Robot movie.
Nah, I remember the Elijah Bailey books fairly well (or at least Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, Robots of Dawn, and The Zeroth Law – I think there were more written later but by then I had moved out of my Asimov phase).
 

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