#Star Wars EU Legends

[amarcia]

He too, was a star, and the light that shone from him was the Force

✨🌙 ART LOG -> @404ama

I read Shadows of Mindor and I really liked Luke's musings on the Force in the book so I had to draw something. Other doodle under the cut:

[iisabelinski]

The lovely chaps behind the FANTASTIC Interregnum fics loved my ✨PRACTICAL SPACE FASHION MARA✨ so much that they asked if we could get a companion piece to celebrate the completion of their latest work.

AND WHO THE F*CK AM I TO SAY NO??!

Rogue Squadron jacket Luke? Non-black wearing Luke? Blaster-wielding, badass Luke? Slightly-older, lines-across-his-forehead Luke? YES.

Oh, also, I updated Mara's face a bit as well, so it would match more with the lighting and shading I did for him.

[star-wars-forever]

Mara Jade

by @venamis

[revanknightwoman]

[incorrect-first-order]

people in the star wars fandom: the sequels are so dumb and stupid i miss the eu, which was badass and cool and not stupid

the eu:

[purringysalamiri]

we need to discuss

waist

[knightofthenewrepublic]

[barriss-and-coffee]

So that's what they put in there...

[from-a-legends-pov]

Star Wars Legends: Poll of the Week - Out-Of-Context Pictures

Which of these out-of-context pictures from a Star Wars Legends property is your favorite? (Context provided below)

1: “Heat stick”: Oh, no, that certainly doesn’t look like anything else, no….

2. Laser-eyes Leia: Is it possible to learn this power?

3. Hit where it hurts: He had it coming.

4. “Turn off the foam, Threepio!” I don’t know, that looks kind of fun, Luke.

5. Han punches an otter? An otter wearing fancy jewelry, no less.

6. Playing ships with a Sith: Vader plus younglings doesn’t usually go well….

And now, for some context:

1: “Heat stick” - Wedge Antilles and Wes Janson spend a cold night together on a mission, and yes, that is supposed to be a heat stick used to warm them and not a glowing something else (Star Wars - original Marvel Comics)

2: Laser-eyes Leia: Meet Leia Organa II, a replica droid of the Princess, designed to speak, move, and act like the real Leia, and equipped with blasters in her eyes. The real Leia Organa is captured and nearly forced to marry Trioculus, a three-eyed warlord claiming to be Palpatine’s son (he wasn’t – that was a different three-eyed guy), but right before the wedding Leia’s friends switch her with Leia Organa II. At the altar, the replica droid blasts Trioculus with a little pew pew straight from her eyes, killing him, and the real Leia is able to escape (Queen of the Empire)

3: Hit where it hurts: When Black Sun boss Prince Xizor’s attempted assault of Leia Organa (by drugging her with his powerful Falleen pheromones) is interrupted by Chewbacca coming to the rescue, Leia gives Xizor a well-deserved knee to the groin before escaping (Shadows of the Empire)

4: “Turn off the foam, Threepio!” On a mission with Leia and the droids, Luke Skywalker uses extinguisher foam to subdue some Blackhole troopers aboard a Hrakian ship (“Gambler’s World,” Early Star Wars Adventures)

5: Han punches an otter? Han Solo’s evil cousin Thrackan Sal-Solo has imprisoned Dracmus, a female Selonian who has been trained as a diplomatic envoy to humans. He forces Dracmus to fight Han, whom he has also imprisoned, but Han is familiar enough with Mandaba, the Selonian language, to convince Dracmus to go easy on him during the fight without Thrackan catching on. Han still loses the fight, but gains Dracmus’s trust, and when Dracmus is later rescued, Han is allowed to come along (Assault at Selonia)

6: Playing ships with a Sith: Plourr Ilo recalls her brother Harran (Harrandatha Estillo), who from childhood was an evil, vicious person who wanted her dead so that he could become ruler. Harran idolized Darth Vader, and when Harran met the Sith as a child, Vader made Harran his protégé, taking advantage of his sadistic personality and apparently also playing ships with him for hours (Star Wars comics, X-Wing: Rogue Squadron - The Warrior Princess)

Hungry for more Legends content? Follow @from-a-legends-pov and consider signing up for our upcoming fanfiction event, From a Legends Point of View! Signups open April 28!

[blackmonitor]

Say good morning to our beloved Legend Thrawn!

[amarcia]

Back home after a quest.

✨🌙 ART LOG -> @404ama

[iisabelinski]

I’m happy to present you with a brand new episode of ✨PRACTICAL SPACE FASHION✨ starring Mara Jade. 

[jewishcissiekj]

Dooku and Asajj in Star Wars: Jedi - Mace Windu

[my-last-brain-cell-is-socrates]

//Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides // Chloe Liese, Always Only You //

[jadecrusades]

Cover art by Tsuyoshi Nagano. “Star Wars: The New Essential Chronology,” Japanese edition. February, 2006.

The Japanese edition of “Star Wars: The New Essential Chronology” depicted a saga-spanning collection by artist Tsuyoshi Nagano. In the Christmas 2015 issue of ImagineFX magazine, Nagano had these memories, “I like Mara Jade a lot, so my drawings of her tend to be full body. Her costume was created using the comics as a reference. Grand Admiral Thrawn’s skin and Mara Jade’s lightsaber match, while Qui-Gon Jinn and Yoda’s lightsabers are the same green, to keep the painting engaging.”

[david-talks-sw]

What are your thoughts on the je'daii? Do they even work, like I find myself irritated by the concept because people often use them to validate/prove the notion that "balance = both sides of the Force"

If you stick to what George Lucas said, in Star Wars a person being "balanced" is someone who accepts their inner darkness and resists its pull nonetheless.

When fans mention the Je'daii, it's usually in the context of:

"The Jedi downgraded from the Je'daii, limited their studies of the Force, refusing to study the Dark Side was a mistake. It was an original sin that caused them to create an imbalance within them."

Which is weird, to me, because the whole point of the comic's narrative is that:

the Je’daii Order’s way was doomed to fail.

Introduced in the Legends comic series Dawn of the Jedi (2012), the Je'daii are the predecessors of the Jedi. They are an order of Force users who studied and practiced both the Light Side and the Dark Side in hopes of finding Balance.

The reasoning is simple: everyone has a bit of good and bad in them, you learn to master the good and the bad sides inside of you, indulging them equally. But while this method seems sound on paper… it didn't work.

Consider that they’re already dabbling with the Dark Side...

... but hey, at least they’re aware of its dangers, they’re trying to be responsible about it.

There's a support system where they all warn each other when they're about to cross a line. But even then, there's many who've fallen and been exiled to a moon, to be rehabilitated.

Suddenly, circumstances compel all of them to use the Forcesaber, a weapon that only activates when you draw on the Dark Side.

And that does something to them. Over the course of a year, they all become increasingly aggressive.

Soon, a faction breaks off because they no longer want to stop using the Forcesaber. They’re addicted to the Dark Side.

A war ensues, at the end of which the Jedi Order is born, a group of Force users who:

acknowledge and accept their inner darkness,

while also striving to overcome it rather than give it power.

So that’s the moral of the whole Je’daii story.

Their idea of "Balance by wielding both" was actually so fragile and difficult to maintain that all it took was a little push for them to become vulnerable to the Dark Side's temptation.

Hell, even after the Jedi Order was established, one of its founders, Master Rajivari - who in Dawn of the Jedi (2012) is framed as a wise ex-general who, albeit strict, spends his days meditating and philosophizing - he goes to the Dark Side too! 

Because that's how the Dark Side works.

The Dark Side isn’t just "negative feelings" or a "bad guy superpower" that you can mix with a "good guy superpower" to unleash the ultimate 'Force blast'. This isn’t an anime.

The Dark Side is a drugs/smoking/drinking addiction.

It's selfish, temporary pleasure. The more you consume it...

... the more you get addicted...

... and the more it consumes you right back...

... until nothing remains.

Jon Ostrander, who wrote Dawn of the Jedi (2012), echoed this sentiment multiple times:

“As I see it, those working on the light side work with the Force, channeling it, open and sensitive to what it tells them. They serve it. Those on the dark side try to impose their will on the Force, to make it do their will, to make it serve them. The Je’daii believe in a balance between the light and the dark side and so attempt to use both. Problem is, a balance is hard to maintain and the dark side is so very seductive.” - John Ostrander, LA Times, 2012

“The Je'daii aren't light side or dark side, although they know and are aware of both. Instead they seek a balance in the Force between light and dark. Balance, however, is a difficult thing to maintain and there is always the danger of falling wholly to the dark side — and some Je'daii have done so.” - John Ostrander, Newsarama, 2012

And this is a recurring theme throughout all of Ostrander’s comics, by the way. Be it with the Je’daii, but also with Quinlan Vos or Cade Skywalker, the point remains the same: 

"Yes, wielding the Dark Side gives you great power, and you get to show off some badass new tricks...

… but it ultimately destroys you and everyone around you."

Remember: if it weren’t for Cade or Quin’s loved ones, neither of them would have come back from the Dark Side. They aren't badasses because they can use Force Lightning, they're badasses because they found the strength to give that up.

So if you genuinely think the Jedi "downgraded" by refusing to give the Dark Side more power than it already has on them... you're missing the point.

“It’s not about ripping things out of the sky using the Force or Force Lightning. A lot of people, they think “oh look how powerful Vader is, look how powerful the Emperor is, I want to play be the bad guy because I get these powers”. It’s an empty feeling, at the end of the day, after the moment. [...] The Dark Side is a spiral downward that you’re trapped in.” - Dave Filoni, “Force of Rebellion”, 2018

It was an upgrade.

Framing "balance" as "equal Dark and Light Side" is like consuming one (1) salad a day and one (1) whole bottle of vodka and calling that "balanced". No, buddy, that'll kill you. Because:

The vodka is better at being destructive than the salad is at making you healthy.

It's won't stay just one bottle per day. It'll eventually become two, three, etc.

Because as George Lucas stated time and again, resisting the Dark Side is a constant struggle.

So that's my two cents.

You've probably already heard about the recent announcement of a Dawn of the Jedi feature film, a biblical epic that will be directed by James Mangold.

And truth be told... it scares me SO much that we came THIS close to an Episode IX: Duel of the Fates that framed "balance" as - you guessed it - giving equal power to your light and darkness.

Like, how did this ⬆️ get as far as it did? Did nobody think to sit Colin Trevorrow down and explain to him that he fundamentally misunderstands how the Force works?

So all I can do is cross my fingers and hope James Mangold has a better grasp of - if not the lore (I wouldn't be surprised if the words "Je'daii" or "Tython" aren't uttered once in the film) - at least the message.