The TSL butchering--who is irked and why?

[Darth Avlectus]

Did I miss something? I know a good idea when I see one:

Ok guys, please keep it on topic, rants about TSL should be in threads pertaining directly to that particular game. Deleted the responses TSL rant caused too. -- j7

Yes, I know it's a pet peeves of mods to have their colorful warnings quoted by an underling forumer, but I think I missed something potentially good...or somesuch.

 

Well, since I'm a bit irked at how much retcon is gong down, I figure why not start a rantfest thread over it? I liked TSL as much as KOTOR 1. The one oddball anomaly and they "kick it to the curb" as they say w.r.t. what's going on here with TSL. Now don't turn venting into mayhem but go ahead and rant, err, as related to the topic as you can of course.

 

Now look, I understand there are people who thought TSL was abominable and that's fine on your own, just let the dissatisfied vent here.

 

Now this.

 

Obviously TSL's having been rushed out affected the story development. I actually like the idea that all of life was endangered, and the wound in the force business. Granted it was poorly illustrated and told in the story, and found a mother figure throughout the story bothersome. However, there has to be an anomaly somewhere in a franchise or else it is just flat and static. For being different it is being treated as the red-headded stepchild in a house of monkeys. I tired of the typical hero man type of story and viewed this as a welcome breath of fresh air. The morally gray realism and the highlight that all sides have a unique identity and not just the old heroes vs villains formula is something the SW lacked and truly needed to give it depth, I think. Open-ended philosophical story. Alas, we aren't even allowed to canonize any other lightsaber color except what is in the films.

 

Anyway, just my rant. I guess there are others who have their sentiments which I welcome here.

[deathdisco]

I think we'll have to wait until the final product is out and all story points revealed.

I'm not optimistic.

[Salzella]

I really, really liked the whole 'death of the Force' storyline and like you am a bit sad they did not make more of it. Granted, I have a whole KOTOR III meta-fanfic building in my head, and have some good ideas for that, and probably therefore no explanation or elaboration would work perfectly, but what the hell. It does make a change from megalomaniacal/recenge-driven Sith attack Republic/Jedi/People/Race/All of the above, and raised questions about how exactly the Force works beyond all the sort of 'binds all life together' pseudo-philosophy and midichlorians pseudo-psysiology. Again, I have a few ideas or theories regarding that myself in the dusty recesses of my brain. One day I'll write all this down. Presumably when the moon turns blue...

[Lord of Hunger]

I am beyond annoyed for the following reasons:

 

1) Revan is a not a villain! He is a tragic hero and living proof that one can rise beyond the LS-DS system, proving that is arbitrary and inaccurate.

 

2) The Jedi were not right! They were wrong about the Mandalorian Wars! They were also a bunch of self-important, hypocritical, discriminatory jerks. Validating the Jedi view of the Revanchists makes no sense.

 

3) The Sith are not innately evil for being Sith! Indeed, the Sith ideology makes far more sense than that of the Jedi in that it is far more practical. As shown in TSL and BOSSR, there are only two flaws: random cruelty and betrayal. Remove that and the Sith are the good guys.

 

I could list other things, but those three are pretty high up on my list. TOR is now going to throw us back to the land of fail (or should I say The Force Unleashed?) where being a self-important, discriminatory, hypocritical jerks is somehow desirable and justice is killing guys with red lightsabers and black cloaks simply because of said appearance.

[Ping]

@LoH:

 

1) Revan was not above good and evil. The quest for power made him go over to the dark side, and he probably thought he could take on the True Sith after uniting the Republic forcibly. I'm not going to say he couldn't, as there's no proof he could or could not, I'm just pointing something out. Heck, Jolee and Kreia are the only ones I consider above good and evil.

 

2) Yes, the Jedi were pretty short-sighted with the Mando Wars, and yes, that made them look like jerks and hypocrites, but who said the Jedi were perfect?

 

3) If someone invaded your country, you wouldn't say "We won't fight them because they look different and that would make us discrimatory". The Sith invaded first. The Republic, naturally, had to fight back. And knowing the Sith tendency to kill everything in sight, then I'd consider killing Sith justice. It's the equivalent of giving the death penalty to a person who committed war crimes.

[cire992]

3) The Sith are not innately evil for being Sith! Indeed, the Sith ideology makes far more sense than that of the Jedi in that it is far more practical. As shown in TSL and BOSSR, there are only two flaws: random cruelty and betrayal. Remove that and the Sith are the good guys.

 

Just to fill you in, the Sith are written in as the villains of the Star Wars universe. Regardless of what you think they are, 90% of the time they are there to be the hero's opponent. You could switch them out for cute bunny rabbits, but as long as they are in that role it doesn't matter what they look like, or think or believe in. Those details are filled in after you establish who's on what team and what team the player is on.

[Rtas Vadum]

@LoH:

 

1) Revan was not above good and evil. The quest for power made him go over to the dark side, and he probably thought he could take on the True Sith after uniting the Republic forcibly. I'm not going to say he couldn't, as there's no proof he could or could not, I'm just pointing something out. Heck, Jolee and Kreia are the only ones I consider above good and evil.

 

2) Yes, the Jedi were pretty short-sighted with the Mando Wars, and yes, that made them look like jerks and hypocrites, but who said the Jedi were perfect?

 

3) If someone invaded your country, you wouldn't say "We won't fight them because they look different and that would make us discrimatory". The Sith invaded first. The Republic, naturally, had to fight back. And knowing the Sith tendency to kill everything in sight, then I'd consider killing Sith justice. It's the equivalent of giving the death penalty to a person who committed war crimes.

 

1. True, he might have chosen the dark side, but that is kinda the point. He chose it because he understood that power isn't supposed to just help you, just be there when you need it. Its supposed to exist with you, something that doesn't breathe when you need it, but breathe with you whenever you do.

 

2. The problem isn't the mere fact that they were short-sighted, or unwilling to act, nor the fact that they are flawed. The problem is that they, as a whole(as in, not just a select few Jedi, such as Kavar), refuse to admit that they are flawed.

 

3.The "kill-everything-in-sight" thing only truely began when Revan was 'killed', and Malak took his place. Though Revan was without doubt, taking the galaxy for his own, he was trying to keep it strong even as he did so, without leveling every planet in sight. Malak, however, decimated everything that was in the way of his short-term goals. Though Revan might have allowed Telos to be destroyed, it was supposed to be an example, not the begining of actions that would destroy every planet the Jedi would run to.

[Darth InSidious]

CHAIRS AVVALON KILED SART WRAS"!!"""21ewoi2222211111 :mad: :mad:

[TKA-001]

1) Revan is a not a villain! He is a tragic hero and living proof that one can rise beyond the LS-DS system, proving that is arbitrary and inaccurate.

The light side dark side system is not arbitrary. Both sides of the Force are real and tangible in-universe phenomena, as we see in much of the EU, not to mention the freaking movies (it should also be noted that the two sides of the Force have no compatibility issues whatsoever with moral ambiguity of the likes of KotOR II). Furthermore, regardless of the player's desperate need to have an untarnished ego, Revan was a villain as the Sith Lord, though he was later a hero as a Jedi (when he first joined the Mandalorian Wars, he was also a hero, because his motivations there were just and he did not use evil-aligned means to that end. When he started to tap into the dark side and spread it among his followers, he and the Jedi Crusaders became anti-heroes, because while their goals were just, they lost their original allegiance to the light side, the Republic, and its people).

 

3) The Sith are not innately evil for being Sith!

That's true, because, as Kreia put it, Sith is a title. Rather, they are evil because they murder, betray, wage wars of aggression, and manipulate others for their own gain and amusement. In no cases do they do so for the well-being of others, beyond justifying their crimes to themselves and others with "I did what I had to for the greater good"-type arguments, because civil war-prone totalitarian dictatorships run by an order of Force-using power-hungry warlords are better than more conventional democratic governments (isn't it interesting how no Sith Lords who are vaunted as "tragic heroes who did what they had to" ever have plans that don't involve putting themselves into positions of absolute power, or the mass murder of threats to said position?).

 

Darth Sidious was one of the the closest any Sith Lord ever came to having no pretenses about caring for other people. Although he did regard himself as a savior for doing away with the Republic and Jedi, he wanted to literally consume all life in the universe into himself (presumably he thought this was a salvation for them, because he was a malignant narcissist, loving basically nothing in existence except himself).

 

As shown in TSL and BOSSR,

Do I really need to point out the mind-staggering absurdity of citing fan fiction as if it is a legitimate canon source?

 

there are only two flaws: random cruelty and betrayal. Remove that and the Sith are the good guys.

What about their tendencies to kill large numbers of other good guys and/or innocents? Besides, your statement about how good they'd be without those two traits is irrelevant, because at no point in the Sith Order's seven thousand year-history of existence and reformation did it ever not have those traits.

 

back to the land of fail (or should I say The Force Unleashed?)

What does TFU have to do with any of this?

 

where being a self-important, discriminatory, hypocritical jerks is somehow desirable

Blanket statement about all Jedi forever, ignoring everything good they do and emphasizing everything bad (even the things which aren't their ****ing fault, like the Mandalorians). Your insistence on the Jedi not being as noble as most people think would be a lot more convincing if you didn't also try to convince the reader that they are worse than the Sith. Saying that the Jedi are a necessary evil is on its own pretty damn far out there, that's one thing. Saying that the Sith are morally superior is absolutely bogus.

 

and justice is killing guys with red lightsabers and black cloaks simply because of said appearance.

Stupid Good Alignment: Stop picking on those poor defenseless hellspawn!

 

Is this statement supposed to apply to TFU? If so, then I'm abso-****ing-lutely dying to hear your reasons for believing that the protagonists of that story are actually in the wrong (defending the likes of Darth Sidious would be a new one even for you).

[jonathan7]

3) The Sith are not innately evil for being Sith! Indeed, the Sith ideology makes far more sense than that of the Jedi in that it is far more practical. As shown in TSL and BOSSR, there are only two flaws: random cruelty and betrayal. Remove that and the Sith are the good guys.

 

I'm sure the average North Korean would totally agree that totalitarian regimes are infinitely superior to democracy :| quite how practicality wins over as being better, than millions not suffering needless fear, pain and death I don't know - however I'm sure Stalin very much had your approach as he sent millions to the gulags to die as he "reformed" Russia.

 

I don't see why you wish to cast the Sith as "good guys" when they are patently self serving and their only desire is increase their own power; they think inwardly and only of themselves. Love is the most powerful force in the universe, always has been always will be; since a Sith is by definition incapable of love, I don't see how they can possibly be "good". Note how Vader ceased to be a Sith when is love for his son over-came him having to obey his Master as reference to the power of love within the SW universe.

[Darth Avlectus]

@LOH on #3)

 

IIRC, didn't Uthar Wynn in K1 have some sentiment denouncing the concept of love? Isn't this what has more or less proven to be what ultimately separates good from bad--what the difference is between mostly and fully embracing the Dark Side? J7 above got to it before I did.

 

I'll agree with you being a sith in and of itself isn't what ultimately decided whether folks were bad or good, though.

[Darth InSidious]

~Commie lies~

 

Dammit jon, enough with your effete, sodomite, socialist un-Amerkin, unconstitutional, un-Christian, European mores to this. Those Koreans are clearly evil, just like poor people. They *deserve* to be killed, maimed and tortured. Don't you bring your "love" here - don't you realise that's just a Satanic, Commie construct designed to corrupt the Youth and Virility of Amerkuh?

 

Besides, they're not Amerkin - obviously they're untermenschen socialist sodomite scum.

[VarsityPuppet]

Dammit jon, enough with your effete, sodomite, socialist un-Amerkin, unconstitutional, un-Christian, European mores to this. Those Koreans are clearly evil, just like poor people. They *deserve* to be killed, maimed and tortured. Don't you bring your "love" here - don't you realise that's just a Satanic, Commie construct designed to corrupt the Youth and Virility of Amerkuh?

 

Besides, they're not Amerkin - obviously they're untermenschen socialist sodomite scum.

 

You tell him Sidious!

 

 

Anyways, this whole discussion is getting ridiculous.

 

I've pretty much stopped classifying and categorizing things like villains and heroes. They're just characters with goals, personalities, flaws, fears, etc...

 

There's no superfluous explanation behind it all: it's just how I see it.

Revan a villain? At one point, yes.

Revan, a hero? Yes, that too.

 

No one's perfect, not everyone follows the stereotype. Not all Jedi are righteous, not all Sith are malevolent. Don't you people see?

 

This is what TSL (and a bit of Kotor1) is about. The reason I like TSL so much is because it got me to actually think about what I was playing, which therefore got me more involved into the game.

I understood and was awed by what was going on and how the story unfolded. For those of you who say that TSL has no story, I do have to laugh.

 

Anyways, erasing TSL makes me mad mostly because.... that cliffhanger ending deserves something grand and epic to redeem itself.

I don't know how TOR is going to turn out, but if it DOES end up ignoring TSL completely, they basically just left a story half-finished there. That's how I see it anyways.

[Darth Avlectus]

The reason I like TSL so much is because it got me to actually think about what I was playing, which therefore got me more involved into the game.

I understood and was awed by what was going on and how the story unfolded. For those of you who say that TSL has no story, I do have to laugh.

 

Well, yeah. Plus another thing is that short sightedness isn't as likely to cost you the LS/DS ending in the first one because it all basically hangs upon your "choice" on Lehon.

 

Whereas in TSL you had to be more wary. I.E. the secessionist movement on Onderon by Vaklu. Maybe all you wanted to do was help them to keep the ways of their culture but it would end up forcing the duel with Kavar. Though I'll admit you are dropped certain clues along the way.

 

Yet you could play it out any number of ways on Dantooine and NarShaddah and it wouldn't mean anything about having to kill a Jedi Master until you actually confronted them and got to choose.

 

Anyways, erasing TSL makes me mad mostly because.... that cliffhanger ending deserves something grand and epic to redeem itself.

I don't know how TOR is going to turn out, but if it DOES end up ignoring TSL completely, they basically just left a story half-finished there. That's how I see it anyways.

 

Granted Obsidian's games have endings which leave something to be desired, I do agree that it deserves better. A chance and a better ending.

[Totenkopf]

Granted Obsidian's games have endings which leave something to be desired, I do agree that it deserves better. A chance and a better ending.

 

I agree with this. TSL left me a little underwhelmed at the end. Partially b/c it felt like it ended too quickly. Ignoring it like the bastard red-headed stepchild of the SW universe seems unduly harsh, though.

[TKA-001]

Not all Jedi are righteous, not all Sith are malevolent. Don't you people see?

What well-documented Sith do we know of who were not malevolent?

[Darth Avlectus]

O cmon your so biased TKA-001. FFFFFail

[Prime]

I am beyond annoyed for the following reasons:

 

1) Revan is a not a villain! He is a tragic hero and living proof that one can rise beyond the LS-DS system, proving that is arbitrary and inaccurate.

 

2) The Jedi were not right! They were wrong about the Mandalorian Wars! They were also a bunch of self-important, hypocritical, discriminatory jerks. Validating the Jedi view of the Revanchists makes no sense.

 

3) The Sith are not innately evil for being Sith! Indeed, the Sith ideology makes far more sense than that of the Jedi in that it is far more practical. As shown in TSL and BOSSR, there are only two flaws: random cruelty and betrayal. Remove that and the Sith are the good guys.

 

I could list other things, but those three are pretty high up on my list. TOR is now going to throw us back to the land of fail (or should I say The Force Unleashed?) where being a self-important, discriminatory, hypocritical jerks is somehow desirable and justice is killing guys with red lightsabers and black cloaks simply because of said appearance.

But these reasons are one set of "expected" opinions of the events in TSL. But not the facts, per se. The events can and were intended to be viewed in multiple ways. But keep in mind that traditionally SW is a mythical story with good and evil characters. The Jedi are intended to be good and the Sith evil. I'm just saying that being annoyed that things don't align perfectly with your set of opinions doesn't really make the story writers wrong in that sense.

[Ztalker]

But these reasons are one set of "expected" opinions of the events in TSL. But not the facts, per se. The events can and were intended to be viewed in multiple ways. But keep in mind that traditionally SW is a mythical story with good and evil characters. The Jedi are intended to be good and the Sith evil. I'm just saying that being annoyed that things don't align perfectly with your set of opinions doesn't really make the story writers wrong in that sense.

 

True.

 

But you got to admit: TSL and Kotor left us with some 'Hey..this is cool and different for a change' feeling which is retconned now...

I don't hate these Bioware writers for it, I just think it's a missed chance. We could have some...mystery...in a universe where everything is sourced, explained and made into canon.

[Hallucination]

I could list other things, but those three are pretty high up on my list. TOR is now going to throw us back to the land of fail (or should I say The Force Unleashed?) where being a self-important, discriminatory, hypocritical jerks is somehow desirable and justice is killing guys with red lightsabers and black cloaks simply because of said appearance.

When I played both KotOR's I ended up killing guys with red lightsabres and black cloaks no matter what alignment I was, but it was either because they were psycho murderers who killed people unable to shoot lightning from their hands (which is worse discrimination), because they tried to kill me or because I was a psycho murderer who killed people unable to shoot lightning from their hands, not fashion.

 

Also, in TOR you will be able to play as your role-models, so much for it being a one-sided all-Sith-are-pure-evil-fest.

[Trench]

What well-documented Sith do we know of who were not malevolent?

 

I give you, Darth Vectivus. Say hello Darth Vectivus.

 

I don't view the Sith as good guys (that's like saying the mountain men were "just misunderstood"), but I do think that Revan became a Sith for the sole purpose of protecting the galaxy at large from a greater evil than himself.

If you had the option of adding the strength of your armies and fleets to those of your homeland by systematically taking over, or letting your homeland be enslaved and pillaged, which would you choose? Besides, if Malak hadn't taken over Revan might've actually taken a position more like that of a Chancellor rather than Emperor. Let them keep their freedoms but remain in power to defend when needed.

[cire992]

... Its easier just to think of it in terms of the purpose of the character in the story. Any game you play is a struggle to achieve a goal. Anything/anyone preventing you from accomplishing the goal is the "bad guy", regardless of who they are or why they are stopping you. Therefore, Exile is a "good guy", because he/she's the player. Nihilus is the "bad guy" because he's an obstacle. If you play as someone on Nihilus' side, then the roles are reversed. That's the best way to view things as it pertains to this thread.

[TKA-001]

Besides' date=' if Malak hadn't taken over Revan might've actually taken a position more like that of a Chancellor rather than Emperor. Let them keep their freedoms but remain in power to defend when needed.[/quote']

We have no reason whatsoever to consider this possibility.

[Lord of Hunger]

@LoH:

 

1) Revan was not above good and evil. The quest for power made him go over to the dark side, and he probably thought he could take on the True Sith after uniting the Republic forcibly. I'm not going to say he couldn't, as there's no proof he could or could not, I'm just pointing something out. Heck, Jolee and Kreia are the only ones I consider above good and evil.

First of all, the Light Side is not equivalent to good and the Dark Side is not equivalent to evil. Notions of good and evil are often subjective (finding true objective morality is possible, but difficult). Further more, there is no true evidence to suggest that there is some omnipotent malevolent impulse out to corrupt all beings.

 

Second of all, prove to me that Revan was corrupted. According to Kreia, he was true to himself. His tactics were extremely efficient and did not waste life. People were only sacrificed when absolutely necessary, and often resulted in the salvation of many others. This does not sound like someone under the sway of the Dark Side.

 

Finally, consider for a moment the possibility that life under Revan's Empire was actually preferable to that of the Republic. We know that the latter was hopelessly incompetent and corrupt to the bone, but what about the nation that Revan built? An empire does not mean daily civil rights abuse, and Revan was a persuader...meaning that he would have preferred to win over his subjects that suppress them with fear.

2) Yes, the Jedi were pretty short-sighted with the Mando Wars, and yes, that made them look like jerks and hypocrites, but who said the Jedi were perfect?

I do need the Jedi to be perfect. If they were remotely any good I would leave them be. But they aren't: They can't even effectively fight the Sith at all!

3) If someone invaded your country, you wouldn't say "We won't fight them because they look different and that would make us discrimatory". The Sith invaded first. The Republic, naturally, had to fight back. And knowing the Sith tendency to kill everything in sight, then I'd consider killing Sith justice. It's the equivalent of giving the death penalty to a person who committed war crimes.

Sith=/=random cruelty. Sith=living as one with nature. The tendency for the Sith to kill everything in sight is a result of certain leaders in certain time periods. Malak completely shifted the Sith policies. The Sith Triumvirate was not so much a group of Sith as a bunch of vampires, a zombie, and a witch. Darth Sidious most likely did not see the Sith as anything other than the more effective of the two tools available for him to use to satisfy his greed for power. Meanwhile, you had Revan, who was far more efficient and level-headed; Bane, who while he did not erase the corruption of the Sith that occurred over time turned it into a benefit; and VP's example of Darth Vectivus. I could cite other Sith who weren't monsters, but that'd take more time than I'm willing to spend. I would, however, be willing to cite a rather long list of Jedi who were monsters. Indeed, there are some Jedi who make the worst of the Sith look like Gizka.

Just to fill you in, the Sith are written in as the villains of the Star Wars universe. Regardless of what you think they are, 90% of the time they are there to be the hero's opponent. You could switch them out for cute bunny rabbits, but as long as they are in that role it doesn't matter what they look like, or think or believe in. Those details are filled in after you establish who's on what team and what team the player is on.

And what you are touching upon is what is wrong with Star Wars (or one of many things): the Sith are always written in as the villains. In the case of Darth Sidious, it is right to write him as a villain because he is one. On the other hand, you have some Sith who were truly good people, especially when they became Sith.

1. True, he might have chosen the dark side, but that is kinda the point. He chose it because he understood that power isn't supposed to just help you, just be there when you need it. Its supposed to exist with you, something that doesn't breathe when you need it, but breathe with you whenever you do.

You misunderstand me. What I am pointing out is that Revan never chose the Dark Side, he pretended to.

 

It is perfectly possible for someone to be above the Dark and Light Sides of the Force. Take Cade Skywalker for example: his shown as using Dark Side abilities with little to no corruption of himself. His Wiki entry remarks that his behavior is definitely not that of a Jedi, but he easily resisted the Dark Side. It seems to me that it merely takes a strong will to use the respective sides of the Force without being influenced in turn. Hell, Dark Side abilities are apparently not Dark Side if you have benign intentions (hint: electric judgment).

2. The problem isn't the mere fact that they were short-sighted, or unwilling to act, nor the fact that they are flawed. The problem is that they, as a whole(as in, not just a select few Jedi, such as Kavar), refuse to admit that they are flawed.

That's another problem they have, one of countless.

3.The "kill-everything-in-sight" thing only truely began when Revan was 'killed', and Malak took his place. Though Revan was without doubt, taking the galaxy for his own, he was trying to keep it strong even as he did so, without leveling every planet in sight. Malak, however, decimated everything that was in the way of his short-term goals. Though Revan might have allowed Telos to be destroyed, it was supposed to be an example, not the begining of actions that would destroy every planet the Jedi would run to.

QFT.

The light side dark side system is not arbitrary. Both sides of the Force are real and tangible in-universe phenomena, as we see in much of the EU, not to mention the freaking movies (it should also be noted that the two sides of the Force have no compatibility issues whatsoever with moral ambiguity of the likes of KotOR II). Furthermore, regardless of the player's desperate need to have an untarnished ego, Revan was a villain as the Sith Lord, though he was later a hero as a Jedi (when he first joined the Mandalorian Wars, he was also a hero, because his motivations there were just and he did not use evil-aligned means to that end. When he started to tap into the dark side and spread it among his followers, he and the Jedi Crusaders became anti-heroes, because while their goals were just, they lost their original allegiance to the light side, the Republic, and its people).

You say this, but provide no proof whatsoever.

That's true, because, as Kreia put it, Sith is a title. Rather, they are evil because they murder, betray, wage wars of aggression, and manipulate others for their own gain and amusement. In no cases do they do so for the well-being of others, beyond justifying their crimes to themselves and others with "I did what I had to for the greater good"-type arguments, because civil war-prone totalitarian dictatorships run by an order of Force-using power-hungry warlords are better than more conventional democratic governments (isn't it interesting how no Sith Lords who are vaunted as "tragic heroes who did what they had to" ever have plans that don't involve putting themselves into positions of absolute power, or the mass murder of threats to said position?).

You cite the actions of some Sith, which are unfortunately cited as the representation of the whole. Furthermore, empires are not necessarily evil and democracies are not necessarily good. I can make a VERY strong case that it is the exact opposite, but I'm not going to take this thread off topic.

Darth Sidious was one of the the closest any Sith Lord ever came to having no pretenses about caring for other people. Although he did regard himself as a savior for doing away with the Republic and Jedi, he wanted to literally consume all life in the universe into himself (presumably he thought this was a salvation for them, because he was a malignant narcissist, loving basically nothing in existence except himself).

For god's sake, you cite Darth Sidious as the ultimate representation of the Sith, never minding the fact that he broke the Rule of Two and probably several other Sith guidelines on multiple occasions for his benefit alone. The Sith are individualists, but they are also a culture. Darth Sidious was in many ways the greatest enemy of the Sith in that he endangered them by promoting anti-Force user sentiment in the Empire, intended to avoid passing on his teachings to a successor, and gather the Sith teachings together and thus decrease their likelihood that the Jedi would eventually erase them.

Do I really need to point out the mind-staggering absurdity of citing fan fiction as if it is a legitimate canon source?

You're right, I wasn't thinking when I wrote that particular part.

What about their tendencies to kill large numbers of other good guys and/or innocents? Besides, your statement about how good they'd be without those two traits is irrelevant, because at no point in the Sith Order's seven thousand year-history of existence and reformation did it ever not have those traits.

Again, you cite the actions of certain Sith. This does not mean that all Sith do this. In fact, there is no teaching that says: go kill lots of people and bring pointless amounts of suffering to as many individuals as possible. Meanwhile, the Jedi teachings do promote blind faith towards leaders, inefficiency, emotion dysfunctionality, and the inability to adjust to new circumstances.

What does TFU have to do with any of this?

It has everything to do with this: dumbed-down plot with overly simplistic morality and pathetically linear sequence of events.

Blanket statement about all Jedi forever, ignoring everything good they do and emphasizing everything bad (even the things which aren't their ****ing fault, like the Mandalorians). Your insistence on the Jedi not being as noble as most people think would be a lot more convincing if you didn't also try to convince the reader that they are worse than the Sith. Saying that the Jedi are a necessary evil is on its own pretty damn far out there, that's one thing. Saying that the Sith are morally superior is absolutely bogus.

Translation: No matter what consistent points you make, you will always be wrong.

Stupid Good Alignment: Stop picking on those poor defenseless hellspawn!

Is this an attempt to be witty? My point that I attempt to make is that while some Sith are indeed hellspawn (such as Darth Sidious), most are not and are rather quite the opposite. Your constant response to every argument I make is that all Sith are hellspawn because of the actions of those that are. I find this very poor logic indeed.

Is this statement supposed to apply to TFU? If so, then I'm abso-****ing-lutely dying to hear your reasons for believing that the protagonists of that story are actually in the wrong (defending the likes of Darth Sidious would be a new one even for you).

Again, I have no wish to defend Darth Sidious. He is a character that has been proven to be evil in every sense of the word. This does not mean that his existence as a villain makes every other Sith evil!

I'm sure the average North Korean would totally agree that totalitarian regimes are infinitely superior to democracy :| quite how practicality wins over as being better, than millions not suffering needless fear, pain and death I don't know - however I'm sure Stalin very much had your approach as he sent millions to the gulags to die as he "reformed" Russia.

We have not been shown what life was like in Revan's Sith Empire, so the only indication of its citizen's treatment that we can go by is the nature of Revan, which is efficient. Mass genocide and fear tactics are indeed very inefficient, when an adoring populace is far more likely to support its nation's agenda.

I don't see why you wish to cast the Sith as "good guys" when they are patently self serving and their only desire is increase their own power; they think inwardly and only of themselves. Love is the most powerful force in the universe, always has been always will be; since a Sith is by definition incapable of love, I don't see how they can possibly be "good". Note how Vader ceased to be a Sith when is love for his son over-came him having to obey his Master as reference to the power of love within the SW universe.

@LOH on #3)

 

IIRC, didn't Uthar Wynn in K1 have some sentiment denouncing the concept of love? Isn't this what has more or less proven to be what ultimately separates good from bad--what the difference is between mostly and fully embracing the Dark Side? J7 above got to it before I did.

Love may be the greatest form of good, but it is not all of what is good. Also, self-interest does not equal selfishness. The latter is self-interest in the form that harms others. Not all Sith are selfish, but all pursue self-interest. Ironically, the Jedi do as well, but deny it.

I'll agree with you being a sith in and of itself isn't what ultimately decided whether folks were bad or good, though.

Thank you.

[cire992]

And what you are touching upon is what is wrong with Star Wars (or one of many things): the Sith are always written in as the villains. In the case of Darth Sidious, it is right to write him as a villain because he is one. On the other hand, you have some Sith who were truly good people, especially when they became Sith.

 

Nope, not wrong, it was entirely deliberate. Especially as it pertains to this thread. TSL was a game, and in video games the character is either preventing you from winning or not. Doesn't matter who or why, just matters that they were designed to do that. Seeing as all the sith characters and minions in TSL are trying to thwart the Exile however and whenever, they are the "bad guys". You realize that this story-telling stuff follows formulas, right? You plan out your characters and dispositions towards each other before you make up their motivations and backgrounds. There is a fairly standard design process for this, and Lucas, Avellone, and pretty much any professional writer/designer out there follows it. Just look at Bioware, their story arcs never change.