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gffaSo instead I'm going to have to give up on the idea of any kind of coherent timeline and firmly remind myself that it doesn't really matter that much anyway. Maybe at some point in the future I'll create an index of in order stuff and that can be my organization instead!
Plus, I'm far more excited about current comics than I am about old stuff I only halfway remember. XD
FIRST POST:
There’s a lot of small details that I’m going to yell about that are amazing in this issue, most especially how much Yoda loves his grandkid and encourages him to question things, but first I’m going to get right to the heart of what’s going on here: Qui-Gon is questioning the Jedi’s path, about them being situated on Coruscant instead of some distant world where they’d be even further away from interacting with other people, questioning about how they work for the Senate, questioning how they fight battles.
And, honestly, pretty much all of this lines up with exactly how I see things. Ultimately, being part of the Republic is what dooms the Jedi. Ultimately, being under the jurisdiction of the Senate is what dooms the Jedi. Ultimately, fighting in the clone wars is what dooms the Jedi. Do I think these were missteps? Yeah, of course. But I think this issue also does a solid job of illustrating why those missteps were taken.
We see in the Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu comic that people don’t understand and fear the Jedi. We see that all throughout The Clone Wars, people fear and misunderstand the Jedi. We see it mentioned several times when the Jedi come up in Star Wars Propaganda. And Yoda himself says it right here:
People fear what they don’t understand. And Qui-Gon’s solution is basically to distance themselves even further from those people? I think it’s pretty safe to say that wouldn’t have worked, either.
And that’s why Qui-Gon can’t find answers by the end of the issue. He goes on his Force-woo journey, he has a bunch of scary visions, and ultimately says, “Violence sows the seeds of the dark side. Unchecked, the Jedi could become that which we fight against.” And the very next page is him going to the Priestess of Wood and telling her that she should go talk to people on Coruscant, should reach out to them and create more allies. To be more connected to this planet of metal. That the whole point isn’t isolating themselves further, but instead working with the system. Not going around unchecked, but instead having a system that helps them stay in their lane and forge allies. (It’s only that the system they’re checked by happens to be in a moral decay spiral.)
The page immediately after his Force-woo vision has him saying:
“You may see it as a city of metal, but there is wisome to be found here. And allies.”
And then the final page with him going back to talk with Yoda, saying, yes, he found some answers (which are apparently, “Coruscant’s not so bad, I guess”) and they talk of how they have to find balance between not bending to the dark side, but still being flexible in how they approach things.
You cannot clip any one piece of conversation out of this issue and take it out of context, because it’s a single story that’s meant to have themes, which means the ending is just as important as the middle (if not more so in some ways) and the ending is that: this is a quandary that doesn’t really have a good answer.
THAT’S THE WHOLE IDEA. THIS IS A QUANDARY THAT DOESN’T HAVE AN ANSWER. There’s no simple, easy answer, no matter how much Force-woo shenanigans Qui-Gon has or how many conversations he has with Yoda. Even in hindsight, knowing how the story goes, we don’t have an answer for how the Jedi could have avoided this.
Leave Coruscant? They’d have been fucked twice as hard, because people feared and mistrusted and misunderstood them even when they were already at the hart of the Republic.
Leave being part of the Republic/the jurisdiction of the Senate? They would be able to help no one, they would have no allies, they would be allies to no one in return.
Stop fighting battles? And instead just let people suffer and die?
This is the conclusion Qui-Gon reaches when he goes on his Force Walk: He ends up with more questions than answers. He has some answers, but not enough to see things clearly. Not enough to clear a path forward.
That’s it, that’s the whole thing. It’s not that the Jedi didn’t think about this stuff, they clearly did. Obi-Wan questions it fairly often in The Clone Wars, about their greater path. Yoda has several big speeches about it. But there were no other answers. Even when I look back with full hindsight and go, “What should they have done differently?” I can’t really come up with an answer, because every option I come up with, there’s another counter-move Palpatine could have made. Not fight in the Clone Wars? They’d have been ripped to shreds by the Republic for not helping, as well as they’d have had to stand by and let people die. Etc.
Ultimately, this comic just further illustrates to me that, no, the Jedi aren’t perfect, but every time we see them (and it’d have been fascinating to get the perspective of the Council, we don’t actually hear anything from them or their side of things) they care deeply and are trying to figure out the best thing to do and are encouraging people to learn and question and do their best. GOD, THEY WERE SO GOOD, THERE WAS SO MUCH LIGHT WITHIN THEM, THEY CARED SO MUCH AND WANTED TO HELP SO MANY PEOPLE AND I’M JUST GONNA CRY ABOUT THEIR LOSS, THAT THIS IS WHY THEY WERE THE BIG THREAT TO PALPATINE, THIS IS WHY HE ABSOLUTELY HAD TO EXTINGUISH THEIR LIGHT FROM THE GALAXY.
SECOND POST:
they were all just trying their best ok honestly at the end of the day it wasn't the jedi that needed fixing it was the governmentthe jedi could have been an extraordinary institution under a competent & caring government they just weren't given the chance (via @missmarthanightingale)
Okay, first of all, those tags are rude as heck, I DID NOT ASK FOR THESE FEELINGS, but second of all THANK YOU FOR THIS.
The state of the galaxy during the time is absolutely fucked up and I love how thoroughly the Propaganda book covers that, I love how clear George Lucas is when he talks about it, but one of the interesting things is that, because the Jedi are often the main characters, we assume that the responsibility rests entirely on them, that they are thought to have as much power and influence as the Senate does.
When they very much do not! We see that they have military leadership, but The Clone Wars (and the comics) establish that they’re acting in a military role, rather than as a governmental one. They are given their authority by the Senate and we see plain evidence (in TCW and in the comics) that the galaxy fears and mistrusts the Jedi, even when they go around helping people, even when they literally have outreach centers for people to come talk to them and learn about them and idk probably have a class about What The Fuck The Force Even Is.
The answer wasn’t for the Jedi to secede from the Republic, because look how Palpatine used the Separatists for that. The answer wasn’t for them to take over in a coup (as they were accused of doing, but they never showed any sign of wanting that power for themselves, only that it couldn’t be left in the hands of a Sith Lord who literally controlled the Senate, I mean, how would that even work, unless they had the Senate on their side and they made absolutely move towards the Senate).
The answer was: They needed a better government. That was what needed fixing.
The Jedi understood that they were walking potential nuclear weapons just by existing, that that’s why so many people in the galaxy would go after Force-sensitive younglings and literally steal them away and auction them off and why the Jedi had to protect that list so intensely. Because they had all this power. And that kind of power that people couldn’t understand--even when the Jedi literally had outreach centers!--needed to be kept in check by another organization, so that people would accept them. They could have some autonomy within their area of expertise, but making them their own separate branch of government? They clearly didn’t want that and they weren’t meant to be politicians by default. (Though, some Jedi would have been good politicians. But they had a higher calling, something that was more important to them, a more precious duty that they cared deeply about. That’s not someone who should be in government.)
Under a competent and caring government, they wouldn’t have been forced to choose between their ideals and the real, tangible lives of people. Of course that wore them down, of course they made less than perfect choices, of course they made mistakes and the dark side ate into them because they were constantly surrounded by it and their psychic brains couldn’t help but soak it up, no matter how much they defended against it. But they weren’t really given the breathing room to take stock or the power to do much more than flit from one tire fire to the next, during the war.
Under a competent and caring government, they wouldn’t have been deliberately placed into a war meant to grind them down and make people see them only as violent, world-destroying soldiers, just so people would look the other way when the Jedi children were murdered.
Under a competent and caring government, they could have helped give the galaxy another thousand years of peace.
THIRD POST:
SO IT’S BEEN LIKE THREE DAYS AND I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS COMIC AND ALL IT BROUGHT UP.
The thing that is so striking about this issue is in Qui-Gon’s actions after his Force-woo vision is that he immediately goes and tells the Priestess of the Wood to stick around on Coruscant for awhile longer and find other allies, to work with other people, to work with the system. This isn’t just there for random filler, it’s half of the entire plot!
And it’s so strikingly similar to the ultimate message that was the issue of the Jedi in the Star Wars: Propaganda book: “That’s it, that’s their big flaw here. The Jedi were bad at public relations.”
In fairness, they were trying, they even had outreach centers! But, yeah, they were bad at PR and that was what led them down the doomed path they took. Oh, it’s more complicated than that, to be sure. There was the dark side constantly beating down on their minds because it was all around them, there was the impossible to answer quandary of honor vs real, tangible lives being lost without fighting for them, etc.
But ultimately the problem was not with the Jedi, not really. The problem was with the government and the Propaganda book makes that really clear in the way the Jedi are consistently not drawn into the absolute roasting the Republic gets. It’s also really clear in this description of Palpatine’s plans from Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary (scanned by the ever-wonderful @glompcat!)
“He understands that the corrupt Republic and the subservient Jedi Order can be brought down by playing to the weakness of the former: its mindless bureaucracy and attachment to power.”
WHAT A SLAM DUNK ON HOW IT’S NOT THE JEDI THAT’S THE PROBLEM, BY SPECIFYING THAT IT’S THE FORMER OF “THE CORRUPT REPUBLIC AND THE SUBSERVIENT JEDI ORDER” THAT’S THE PROBLEM.
Further illustrating that the answer to the problem was with the corruption in the Senate, that the Republic needed a better government, full stop, that’s it, that’s the real problem. Whatever else got gronked up along the way, this was the heart of it. That allying yourself with others is good, but when you’re allied to a body of government that’s spiraling into moral decay, it’s going to fuck you over hard. The answer is to get a better government. (Except that’s real fuckin’ hard when you’re only .01% of the public, you’re only ten thousand people out of a quadrillion people or whatever, when you’re kinda bad at PR.)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-14 02:57 pm (UTC)I’ve not read either the Qui-Gonn or Maul Age Of Republic comics yet, cause Christmas nonsense so...
Part 1
That all sounds so true. People really don’t understand the Jedi’s purpose at all. And them being seen as warriors is definitely a problem (which reminds me of the Anakin and Obi-Wan comic). Certainly there are benefits to them being part of the republic, as negotiators for one, but the perception of them being warriors is ultimately the most harmful part.
You’re so right, no matter what they did, they would have been screwed. Watching the Clone Wars often made me sad, because no matter what good the Jedi did, or how many people they helped, those same people would likely be screwed over by the Empire as soon as they were gone.
Part 2
I agree there too, the problem was that the government was so corrupt. This is laid out several times, notably of course in Episode I and other episodes of the clone wars. Palpatine used that to his advantage and the Jedi couldn’t really do anything about. It’s clear that some Jedi did distrust politicians, but they couldn’t do anything about their situation.
Another issue with the public perception of the Jedi is how few of them there were. Few people would have ever seen a Jedi or understood anything about the force (even with outreach centres and stuff). On top of that during the Clone Wars you have an ex Jedi leading the separatists, which would have further increased that mistrust (because if one Jedi could go bad, what’s to stop the rest from doing the same?)
I think I mentioned before that I think putting the Jedi as generals was a mistake. Before the Clone Wars how many Jedi actually had real combat experience that would have qualified them for such a role? My guess is not many and yet they were all given the roles of generals, when they should have been better integrated into the military (if at all).
Part 3
I agree there, the Jedi had no real public relations (outreach centres could only go so far) but I guess they probably didn’t think they needed them. Then the war came and, all of a sudden they get all this bad press against them and they didn’t have the skills to combat it (and their primary focus was on the war itself and helping people, rather than dealing with their own image).
Damn that description totally nails it!
no subject
Date: 2018-12-14 07:46 pm (UTC)The problem was that every single step seemed like the only reasonable choice they had at the time--should they not have been generals, when they were the ones who had even the barest minimum of ability to lead a fight? We see that they were reasonably good at it! If they'd been utter crap at leading the war, they wouldn't have kept the position for years. At least they had SOME experience, unlike the clones who had ZERO experience and were just barely trained enough to follow orders. At least the Jedi had the Force and were used to missions (for the most part)!
It makes sense, they were the only large scale peacekeeping force the Republic had, there was NOTHING ELSE like the GAR before them! Every system and planet had its own military and police, if you find yourself suddenly dropped into a war, what else should they have done? Let the clones take on all the responsibility? There was no one else. (In theory, they could have scrambled to put together a military, like Tarkin and Yularen and stuff, but even then there would have been no established hierarchy.)
And yet it was still absolutely what led to their doom, it was still ultimately a huge mistake. They had the skills, they had the organization, they were the only established option, what else should they have done? Even eschewing the titles of generals, they would have been rising stars in the military, Palpatine was gunning for them, he would have made sure that they were seen as the problem with the war, that they weren't willing to do their part, that they were too unwilling to actually commit to this war, why? Were they planning to cecede, too? Etc.
Better government + better PR really does seem like the only answer, because Palpatine was so very good at what he was doing. ;__;
no subject
Date: 2018-12-14 08:20 pm (UTC)That is true too! Some experience is better than none at all. And if they had been awful at leading the war, that too would have worked in Palpatine’s favour.
That’s very true too! Obviously there were people drawn from local militaries (like as you say Tarkington and Yularen) but how many of those would have made good leaders? (And let’s face it Tarkin... isn’t the best either). They could have cobbled together something from local forces but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as effective (and that’s something I can see as being an issue in post TLJ Resistance stuff).
Exactly! He had them cornered and they had no clue. Whatever option they took would have screwed them over just like you say.
That’s very true. And neither were options for the Jedi sadly. As soon as Palpatine became Chancellor they were screwed.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-14 11:54 pm (UTC)Oh, there might have been some avenue open to them, like if they'd had better PR, would more of the Senators have trusted them or fewer people turned a blind eye to their children being murdered? But even then the clones were always going to be in play, they were always going to be the bulk of the GAR, the Jedi were not involved in that decision, that was Palpatine and the Senate sending them to Geonosis, that was Palpatine and the Senate already voting to create a military (that's why Padme had an assassin after her, because she opposed that vote), they were heading there, no matter what. And that military was always going to turn on the Jedi and murder them and who could have stopped that?
If they'd gotten Palpatine out of there, I like to think they'd have had a chance to win the war quickly and end it (because they were good, but Palpatine was constantly feeding Grievous and Dooku information) and the underlying problems within the Senate might have had a chance to be rooted out by Senators like Bail and Padme and Mon.
But with Palpatine in play? No, everything was screwed to end up exactly the way it did, because he played on these massive forces (like the Senate and the darkness in the galaxy) that one right turn or left turn wasn't going to change. And, as heartbreaking as that is, I kind of love that that's the feeling you get while watching the prequels? It's not fate so much as it's this slowly closing massive jaws of death and there's nowhere else to go, there's no room anywhere else.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-15 12:13 am (UTC)Yeah that’s true, the republic were on the verge of creating an army anyway, it’s just no one expected there to be one ready made for them right when they needed it. (Which, how would Palpatine have explained it if Obi-Wan hadn’t stumbled on it?)
Ironically if they’d just destroyed the Invisible Hand during the battle of coruscant, all the major player would have gone right along with it. The peace process could have resumed and the war could have been over. And with those three in charge the republic could have returned to what it was supposed to be.
Exactly! And that feeling fills the Clone Wars as well of course, which they did so well. And there’s also, just look at the prequels and you can see the Palpatine seizes any opportunity that comes his way. Padge makes it to Coruscant? He uses her to push for a vote of no confidence. Obi-Wan finds the army? Let’s use it!
no subject
Date: 2018-12-15 12:32 am (UTC)And the problem was that the Jedi were so busy focused on hunting Grievous and Dooku down (because they were the tire fire right in front of them, they were the immediate threat), they didn't have time to go find the deeper threat, no matter how hard they looked (and they were looking for the Sith Lord Master!), because Grievous and Dooku were killing people RIGHT NOW.
And the problem was that the Jedi were given no choice about using the clones, because the Republic--who supposedly didn't allow slavery--was like, "Well, but we don't want to have to fight them ourselves!" so they looked the other way. And to do this, banks got deregulated, which meant people were going into poverty at an alarming rate, which disenfranchised the Outer Rim even further, which pushed them towards the Separatists and, like, this is all the political stuff.
The problem is that the Jedi were equipped to deal with the Force, they weren't equipped to deal with politics (and I'm not sure they SHOULD be more political, because their whole thing is that they desire to follow the Force and the Force is never going to be politically convenient!) and where Palpatine succeeded was POLITICS. That he was a Sith Lord was basically secondary to what really won him the Empire. He didn't really need Vader, he didn't really need Maul, he didn't really need Dooku as an apprentice Sith Lord, but as an apprentice politician. (Ironic for someone who left because the Jedi had allied themselves to politics. But that's what the dark side does, it twists and manipulates and lies.)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-15 12:43 am (UTC)Oh of course. And that was another way he cornered them because if they didn’t deal with those two people would be like ‘well wtf are you doing instead?’
Yeah that’s it exactly! Plus the clones were trained to be a unified fighting force. If the republic’s military (which as far as I can tell was mostly various regional forces) had to work together there’d be all kinds of issues which would work against them. And all those other issues you mention, that just fits in nicely with palpatine’s plans. If he can create more issues the better,
Again, you’ve really got it there. While it’s clear the Jedi did have members that were good at diplomacy and negotiation, they just weren’t skilled with the deeper politics, which Palpatine was. He really played everyone and really, he didn’t need the force at all to do it, he just used politics. I think the only apprentice of the three that he really ‘needed’ in the end was Dooku, to rally the separatists and to be a scapegoat.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-15 01:10 am (UTC)Add that to how the Jedi couldn't really have eschewed the war without being torn to shreds, possibly entirely kicked out of the Republic all together (and possibly even losing their children to the Republic), and without turning their backs on innocent people who needed them, it's understandable why they jumped into the war. It was still a mistake to do it so quickly, but, like, Yoda's the first person to admit that. Doesn't mean it wasn't still understandable, without hindsight.
I think the only apprentice of the three that he really ‘needed’ in the end was Dooku, to rally the separatists and to be a scapegoat.
Entirely agreed! Dooku was probably the only one that was really necessary for the set-up. Possibly Anakin IF we believe that he was destined to strike Palpatine down with Mace and Palpatine swayed him over to the dark side so he had more time to build his Empire, then I could believe Anakin was necessary. But otherwise, Anakin really had nothing to do with the formation of the Empire or even was necessary as a high-profile Jedi. Dooku, the former Jedi, now the political head of the Separatists was far more necessary to Palpatine's plans. And, honestly, even then he could have continued using people like Nute Gunray, if he'd absolutely had to!
no subject
Date: 2018-12-15 03:44 pm (UTC)That’s so true. I think that Yoda (and the others) might have hoped that if they jumped in and caught the separatists off guard on Geonosis that they could have ended it before it began. Of course it didn’t, and thinks escalated from there and they couldn’t back out.
Thanks! That’s exactly what I was thinking as well.