#the Galactic Republic

[short-wooloo]

George Lucas makes an entire trilogy about how a flawed democracy is better than dictatorship, only for countless people to stan the separatists

[stars-n-spice]

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[ospreyeamon]

The former Separatists must have been left feeling so horribly, bitterly vindicated after Palpatine proclaimed himself Emperor. Not the top leadership, who knew they’d gotten into bed with a Sith Lord, but the regular Seps who had no more idea that their government was being puppeteered by the Sith than the ordinary people who remained loyal to the Republic whose government the Sith had also subverted.

Joined Separatists because you hated Palpatine or were just unhappy that he outstayed his term as Supreme Chancellor? Turns out the guy was evil all along.

Joined the Separatists because you felt the representation in the Senate was unfairly weighted in favour of the Core Worlds to the detriment of the other regions? The Senate is now so undemocratic it’s not even pretending to be a democracy.

Joined the Separatists because you worried too much power had been consolidated in the position of Supreme Chancellor, destroying the balance of power between the different branches of government? The position has been formerly transformed into an autocratic Emperor.

Joined the Separatists because you were outraged the Republic was interfering with systems' legal right to cede, eventually resorting to military force to do so? The new Empire is openly consolidating its grip on power and widening its territory through conquest.

[writerbuddha]

Hello, I’m sure there is an interview somewhere where either George Lucas or Dave Filoni explain how the Jedi order gave into fear of losing the Republic they were so determined to protect the Republic and that led to their down fall.

Hello! :)

I don't know about Dave Filoni, he had some takes on Star Wars and the Republic (and honestly, I doubt he went this far) but I would be very, very surprised if George Lucas would've say something like this.

In George Lucas' story, the issue is greed, defined by him as "you’re either afraid you’re not going to get what you want, or you’re afraid that, when you get it, somebody’s going to take it away from you. It’s all fear driven.” And also as "to not accept the reality of life’s passages and changes, which is to say things come, things go."

Projecting this to the Jedi Order's relationship to the Republic - to democracy, to the symbiotic circle formed by the galaxy - would be very problematic. It would mean that letting go of the coming and passing things includes letting the Republic, democracy, symbiosis just pass. This view is rooted in the idea that a republic, a democracy is something you have rather than something that you do. It must be constantly recreated by belief in and commitment to it, to strive to be as one, to work together as the whole system of life. Wanting to preserve, to maintain a democracy is not holding on, it's carrying on. If one views something like the Republic as something that can be owned, kept, hold on to, that's already a red flag, in my mind.

Whenever Lucas talks about these things, he never says the Jedi did something wrong. He says these things:

"The Jedi, they don't attack, they only defend. Yoda didn't attack until [Episode II]. There's a conundrum ultimately. It's been there forever. Which is, are you just going to sit there and let them kill you? Or your loved ones? Or destroy the world that you know? Or are you going to try to fix it? At some point, you do have to sand up for what you believe in. Obviously, I can make my religion be whatever I want it to be. It doesn't have to be consistent. If a cobra's going to strike you, I think you have every right to put a stick up there and hit him over the hehad. Because it's either him or you."

James Cameron's story of science fiction

"It's one of the conundrums of which there's a bunch of in my movies. You have to think it through. Are they going to stick with their moral rules and all be killed, which makes it irrelevant, or do they help save the Republic? They have good intentions, but they have been manipulated which was their downfall."

Star Wars Archives 1999-2005

“[The scene with Obi-Wan and Dooku] allows you to kinda have some sympathy for Dooku in that he carries the sympathies of most of the Jedi which is that the Senate is corrupt and is incapable of carrying out any meaningful actions because they argue about everything all the time.”

Which is to say, the Jedi were aware of the shortcomings of the Republic, which were, as Lucas said in Star Wars Archives: Lucas explains, in Episode I, II and III, “the Senators have fallen out of the symbiotic circle” and the “symbiotic relationship had torn apart” because “they couldn’t agree on anything because their interests became so divergent, so they couldn’t get anything done as a Republic.”

Attack of the Clones commentary track

However:

"As dedicated as the Separatists were in their resolve to create a new order to replace the failing Republic, the Jedi were equally determined to preserve the Republic and defeat the Sith, who they understood all too well were the masterminds of the Separatist movement. They still believed in the Republic, still deemed it a Republic worth saving.”

Foreword for Matthew Stower's Shatterpoint, written by Lucas

“The Jedi are always sort of fighting this reality of the fact that they’re, in essence, diplomats. They sort of persuade people to do the right thing, but their job isn’t really to go around fighting people. Yet they’re now used as generals and they’re fighting in a war, and they’re doing something that they really weren’t meant to do. They’re being corrupted by this war, by being forced to be generals instead of peacemakers.” E! Behind the scenes (which is the only problem he mentions.)

So, based on this, it would be strange, to put it mildly if Lucas would say, the Jedi were afraid to lose the Republic, and that led to their downfall. The Republic was something that they were supposed to maintain, to preserve, to protect, and "letting it go" doesn't really working with the fear of loss theme and the message that you need to let go of things, because you can't hold on to anything. Especially because symbiosis - democracy - is built on compassion, which is the antidote of fear of loss.

But if you happen to find something like that, please do drop me a link!

:) :) :)

[animatedminds]

Tales of the Jedi (Initial Thoughts: Dooku)

It’s a Star Wars animated series, so of course we’re here!

This is just some initial thoughts I had, and only about Dooku - I’ll have thoughts about Ahsoka later, but I wanted to get these down first.

SPOILERS, BY THE WAY!

The big overarching idea is that I love the tragic descent of the character shown in the story, but it’s sadder when you watch The Clone Wars and understand that Dooku is a complete hypocrite. We see his descent into colluding with Sidious as a form of radicalization - not the first time Sidious will con an apprentice into joining his side by way of making them think he actually cares about their problems and ideologies. Dooku is increasingly dissatisfied with the Senate, which at that point in time is full of corrupt individuals. He sees himself as a man on the side of the people of the galaxy, who continually suffer due to the Senate’s corrupt decisions, and becomes increasingly disillusioned with the Council who mostly do what the Senate asks them to do. The Jedi are willing to go to bat for the people of the galaxy, but are unwilling to go out of their way to find out what the people actually need - and so, have to have the truth thrown in front of them, often violently, before they will act. Sort of like Prosset Dibs, except Dooku isn’t a complete idiot and actually has a point, or better yet like Barris Offee - who likewise eventually directed her rage in the wrong direction. His fall in Legends was fairly similar.

But the shame if is that for all disdain at the Senate constantly exploiting the people of the galaxy, he would end up no better. Indeed, much like Anakin he would end up worse. Darth Tyranus is an extremely exploitative person. Heck, Count Dooku - outside of his SIth persona - is an extremely exploitative person. Both in terms of allying with and empowering people who blatantly exploted the common people, and doing so himself: in TCW, Dooku freely treated the people of the galaxy like tools - worse, like stepping stones. Loads of TCW episodes are based around Dooku enslaving innocent people, or using their suffering directly to his advantage - like simply orchestrating their deaths because doing so strikes a blow against his enemies. This includes his own constituents in the Separatist Alliance - talking of course about the Separatist Council, some of the few people - poor patsies and fools too pure and gullible for this galaxy - who remain fairly sympathetic throughout the conflict due to their hilariously off base belief that the Separatist state is free of corruption and isn’t run by a band of greedy corporations. They think the world of Dooku. He has several of them killed just because it’s more convenient to either Sidious or himself for them to die. This makes for a sad contrast. It’s an undeniable trait of TCW Dooku that he is exactly the kind of person pre-fall Dooku would have despised. This is even brought up in the episode by Dooku himself, and more dramatically by Yaddle: Dooku is willing to kill as many innocents as possible to achieve his vision of Order and Peace. And if they end up in the way of his Order, then he only offers the Peace of the grave. But what I like even more is how you can see the rationalizations:

One of the things I’ve always very much preferred about the current canon over Legends is its depiction of the Dark Side. The Dark Side in Legends was a semi-sentient corruption: it made you turn evil. It was often the source, rather than the consequence, of the characters’ dark choices: the more you use it, like a demonic possession the more it rewrites your brain to be what it wants it to be. Not only does this take away so many of the characters’ agency in favor of a concept that allows less consequences for heel turns, I always felt it was a misinterpretation of what Lucas had in mind with the idea. Lucas always depicted the Dark Side of an abstraction of his characters’ darker inclinations - wrath, revenge, ambition, greed, hopelessness - the result of them listening to the parts of themselves other characters learn to control and release.

The current canon has been better about this, mostly by recontextualizing the Dark Side more akin to a drug: this works much better for what Lucas intended - falling into those darker inclinations, those harmful decisions, those self-centered ideologies, it’s easier than it seems and feels good. Thus, life is built on rationalizations that allow people to justify that feeling to themselves. People, once they rationalize ideas by way of being taught them, having them propagandized, or simply justifying them on their own, will fight to the death to protect them even if the rest of the world is standing up and showing them the horrible effects of what they’ve chosen. And the various Vader comics, books and other appearances like Kenobi have been great about this: no matter how opposite they may seem, the media makes it clear that Vader is still Anakin - but an Anakin who has decided to cast off everyone in favor of only listening to himself, while rationalizing away the fact that he’s nothing but a ball of rage and wrath at this point. Thus after a certain point, bringing Order to the galaxy simply became inseparable to him from punishing the galaxy for being in disorder, allowing him a justification to inflict his wrath upon everyone around him.

See also: Dooku. You can see the cracks already there - the path from being the Dooku he is at Qui-Gon’s death to the Dooku we see in TCW is as simple as coming to believe that regular people are a small price to pay for putting his vision in place. Kriff, he’s already doing it. He killed Yaddle - even though she wholeheartedly agreed with him - because her existence was nevertheless a threat to him. Why not a few more? Why not hundreds? Why not millions? The ends justify the means, and Dooku must be on top to guarantee the ends he sees, even if his actions make those ends more and more unobtainable. And so evolves Tyranus - a hypocrite who meets the same tragic end of every other poor fool who bought what Palpatine was selling.

I hope we get another book or story about this middle era of Dooku - when he’s still idealistic enough to claim to be a champion of the people, but swiftly on his way to becoming misanthropic instead - with a similar tone perhaps to Legends’ Dark Rendezvous.

I’ll have thoughts about Ahsoka’s story tomorrow. The Dooku one just really inspired me to start talking, you know? May the Force be with you!

[silencedminstrel]

(Art by Dominique van Velsen)

CALM BEFORE THE SHITSTORM - LEADER OF THE GALACTIC UNION TOURING A MYSTERIOUS FACILITY STORING DANGEROUS ALIEN ARTIFACTS

By Ag I should be happy when I heard that (Earth Alliance) President Ibnu Khaldun's lawyers have revealed that the thief of the Second Sephiroth--the only source of power for The Messenger Starship--appeared to be none other than The All-Seeing-Eye (leader of the Watchers) himself! Which of course didn't surprised me since we already knew

That one a lot earlier but...the fact that that info was hacked right out of The Watchers' own terminal? (Sigh) We may be looking at a huge political shitstorm that will cost us all more than sleepless nights! And what about these new reports of a gathering of deviant tech cultists outside the Outer Rim and led by--supposedly--a resurrected Hacker? And

These "accompanying" rumors that they're planning to storm The Valley City? (Union's Capitol) And just as The Council (of The Great Guardians) is still in a power vacuum how are we supposed to...? But we know that if they're serious about it then this is where they'll strike first: The Union's storage facility for Kltua-Lymonzs wreckage too dangerous

To be disposed of! So would The Watchers side with those cultists and lead them here? Ag forbid! After that yesterday's fiasco I'm sure the public have begun losing trust in them but--knowing their leader better--we Guardians aren't quite so sure! Humoga, it's all in your hands now! You're The Council's only hope whether you like it or not! (Sigh)

[ravenhairedwaywanderer]

Gonna go make me some food, pack me a vase full of happy trees, and then Ahsokatime 😂

[yiliy]

A gentle reminder that Tatooine is not part of the Republic.

Jedi have no authority on Tatooine

Republic has no authority on Tatooine

Republic system didn't fail the people of Tatooine, because people of Tatooine don't live within the Republic's system

Yes, Republic is flawed, yes it's horrible a planet is controlled by gangsters. But membership in the Republic is completely voluntary. To act against rulers of another planet is an act of war. To absorb a planet without it willingly applying is not what freedom and democracy stand for.

Tatooine is messed up because of the Hutts, not because of the Republic or the Jedi.

Qui-Gon talking about Anakin not having been born in the Republic.

[derickbatista31]

The Jedi Code

[short-wooloo]

I just cannot understand why people think the Jedi being a part of the Republic and answering to the senate is so bad

"OH no! The space wizards are held accountable by a democratically elected legal authority! How terrible!"

And more importantly, it worked, for 25,000 years it worked

Why does a few decades at the very end mean the whole several thousand year system needs to be written off?

"But the senate was corrupt!"

But the Jedi weren't, they continued to do their job, it's not on them if the senate stopped pulling its weight, not to mention there were still senators who were trying to do their jobs till the very end

Not to mention how the sorry state of the Republic near its end was a product of the sith's efforts to destroy it

[mrfandomwars]

Ah yes, the Jedi fell because they were Diplomats and had to deal with Bureaucracy, which led them to be able to work with the Republic for Thousands of Years since it was slowly starting to come together, twenty five thousand years ago.

Yes, this is TOTALLY the reason why the Jedi fell, and not the extremist cult with a boner for genocides planning their downfall for one thousand years and slowly corrupted the Republic+ the citizens of said galactic government becoming Lazy

(If you didn't realize, this is SARCASM)

[coaz-photography]

Embankment

[ospreyeamon]

on the prevalence of bounty hunters in the gffa

I’m not sure George Lucas intended bounty hunters to become as prominent as they are in the Star Wars universe. It might just be a consequence of Boba Fett Armour Rad ✨, like the invention of the Mandalorians. However, thinking about  the Galactic Republic, it does make sense that there would be a lot of bounty hunters running around fulfilling a particular societal need.

The Galactic Republic’s structure is difficult to pin down because it doesn’t have a clear real world parallel. While it’s usually the United Nations or USA that are brought up, I suggest that its closest structural equivalent is the European Union; single currency, open boarders, high degree of internal autonomy while members are still meant to be bound by the laws and rulings of the higher courts and legislature, multitude of languages and cultures, states have the right cede unilaterally without requiring permission from the central authority. There are still differences though, and the one relevant to this discussion is that we aren’t shown a Republic equivalent of Europol, or the better-known Interpol. During the prequels era there are the Republic Judicial Forces and Jedi Order, but both these organisations provide specialist and crisis assistance rather than dealing with the day-to-day dealings of local planetary and system law enforcement systems. Nobody is calling the Jedi because someone skipped off-planet rather than front-up to court after crashing their speeder through a sixth-story window. Even if local law enforcement were inclined to do such a thing it wouldn’t be permissible, because the number of Jedi and Judicials is tiny compared to the overall population of the Republic.

I think the Republic logically should have an equivalent of Interpol, which I call the Intersector Security Bureau so it can keep its acronym when it is transformed into the Imperial Security Bureau. Given how easy it appears for anybody who owns a private starship to planet-hop undetected, facilitating information exchange must be hugely important. Still, the fact that so far as I can recall the ISB is never mentioned before the Republic becomes the Empire suggests that its reach is limited before Palpatine starts beefing it up. The Jedi do a lot of investigating but mostly rely on their own resources or liaise with the local planetary authorities.

There are a few reasons why an early ISB space!Interpol equivalent might have less prominence and reach than RL!Interpol. One is that it is affected by the same resources sap as the Judicial Forces; losing work to the Jedi Order and funding to local planetary or sector law enforcement. Another is that the Republic’s diverse array of species and cultures creates a complicated environment for hashing out the cultural consensus necessary for the level of understanding and trust required for agreeing to carry out other agencies’ arrest warrants. For example, the Republic’s de facto age of majority – the minimum age at which a person can hold Republic public office, like a become a Senator – is sixteen. This is not an age of majority that member systems of the Republic are required to adhere to in any way; having species with wildly different lifespans and lifecycles like wookiees, trandoshans, and ruurians makes trying to enforce a single age of majority a terrible idea. But that means that you have a planet like Naboo, where Padme Amidala can be employed in the political office of Princess of Theed when she is nine, under the same government as Alderaan, where the heir to the throne doesn’t step up into their full public role until they come of age at sixteen. Other points of difference – attitudes to gambling, recreational drug usage, corporal punishment, reasonable person tests, etc. – create a plethora of friction points between legal jurisdictions.

Then there’s the issue that many of the planets in the Republic aren’t going to trust the governments of every other planet in the Republic. RL!Interpol is facing controversy regarding the accusation that some countries like China have been submitting warrants for arrest on people who are actually political dissidents. In the Republic that translates to, for example, corporate-controlled planets putting out warrants on whistle-blowers calling out the companies’ fraud, environmental regulation violations, debt slavery, etc.

So, if you can’t rely on intersector law enforcement cooperation to retrieve your dangerous driver before any more speeders become wedged through the windows of high-rise apartments, what do you do? You put a bounty on them.

This implies that mainstream socially respectable bounty hunting is quite different from the “I can bring you in hot or I can bring you in cold” business the Mandalorians engage in. Reputable law enforcement agencies will only want their bounties hot and minimally injured; the idea is to get criminals back so they can be tried and punished in accordance with your law. And what if a bounty hunter screws up the bounty you posted and grabs the wrong person? If they’re alive you can stick them on a shuttle back to the planet they were kidnapped from, but if they’re dead that’s a PR nightmare and now you need to chase after that bounty hunter to charge them for murder.

Looking back a couple of millennia from the Post-Ruusan Republic to the Old Republic, many of these forces are still in play. One example of a deficit in law enforcement cooperation that I found particularly memorable was Miel Muwn of the Sullustan Constable Brigade from the Smuggler class story, who personally travelled to Coruscant in pursuit of the stolen Murustavan Ruby where he deputised two Very Upstanding Lawful Citizens to aid him rather than collaborate with the Coruscanti authorities.

Additionally, the division of the galaxy between the Republic and the Sith Empire creates another reason for those governments to work through bounty hunters. Because the Republic and the Empire are either in a state of hot or cold war, they obviously aren’t cooperating on issues like intergalactic crime. If either power wants to arrest someone who has fled into the other’s territories, the most legal least likely to spark violent conflict option available to them is to hire a third party (it’s still not very legal or unlikely to end in violence). Hence, bounty hunters everywhere.

…there are so many ways that this dysfunctional excuse for a system would produce bad outcomes.

[netmors]

Eleventh Fleet AU - Thrawn, Eli Vanto and Karyn Faro's timeline concept arts set.

Suddenly I wanted to make a selection of art and see the progress - I really enjoyed drawing the timelines for the characters. I'm especially pleased with how they turned out ////v////

[twinsunstars]

would the jedi watching holo-films of the jedi who lived during the high republic be like us watching films of the 1900s-90s and seeing everyone act so polite and be properly dressed in suits and dresses while on outings?