Random Star Wars Thoughts

[Rapine]

Exactly. If I were in his position I would be fighting in a very Sithy style. Do not relent, and take every opportunity to beat your foe.

Like these examples:




Just cause you have a saber doesn't mean you can't throw down and whoop someone's ass old school.

Love that cinematic!

He wins that fight.

[Darth Justicar]

I can actually see a series of Force-assisted maneuvers Kylo could have employed if the writers had not forced him to hold the Idiot Ball, that Rey would have laid herself open to, but the key would be to do it SO fast that she couldn't react to it, because the longer her Force connection is allowed to deepen, the harder it would be to execute this maneuver

NOTE: What I am describing could well FAIL.  But I would rather see a failed, in-character attempt to press her in her moment of weakness, than forced stupidity to glorify an opponent who should not have an easy path to victory and only has one at ALL because Kylo is injured and grieving.



As soon as she got her eyes off of "me" and started to lose situational awareness (which with her inexperience SHOULD be a temporary effect until she fully connects to the Force), I would spin out or do whatever fast, Force-assisted maneuver I had to do to get to her side at an angle where I could then clip her in the back. If to kill, I'd just cleave her in two on the spot.  If to capture, I'd clip her hard enough to leave a major burn wound similar to what Finn got.  Momentum would push her forward, face-down.  Given the severe burn to the back, instead of rolling out of the takedown the way an experienced fighter ought to, Rey is likely to try to push to her feet on all fours, and not be able to do so at full speed.  Next maneuver for me would be to take one or both legs, depending on how my reach was at the moment, to ensure she cannot get up and end the right quickly since if I am in Kylo's place, I'm wounded and the quicker of an absolute end I can get to the battle, the better my chances of rescue and survival.

Now, that could EASILY be wrong, and there could be ways to defeat that series of maneuvers.  In fact I would expect there could be.

BUT it is at least a path of thinking that does NOT force Kylo to outright hold the Idiot Ball. I'd rather see the attempt I described above tried and FAIL somehow, than what happened in the movie.  At least I would accept that as a fair defeat.

Another path that could have made for okay moviemaking would have been for Kylo to have Rey where he could defeat her and then have the crevasse open up like it did and spare Rey.  Yes, it would be a deus ex machina and I would not consider it THAT great, but I would consider it FAR better than doing one of the CLASSIC tricks writers use to promote a Mary Sue, of making the opponent temporarily STUPID.

[Darth Logos]

I can actually see a series of Force-assisted maneuvers Kylo could have employed if the writers had not forced him to hold the Idiot Ball,

This is what worries me most about the new canon. The writers are not familiar enough with the OC to write anything that truly makes sense. Their attempts to be cool and edgy just come across as a fail of legendary proportions. (Thusly, my opinion of SKB.)

[Darth Justicar]

See, I can excuse a technology issue much easier than I can excuse a characterization problem.  The Star Trek fan in me can technobabble and BS just about ANYTHING technological even if it's completely crazy.

But I can't get around screwing up a character, which is why I need to see improvement with Rey and I do not ever again want to see Kylo made stupid or two-dimensional to prop up someone else or shut up people's complaining.  That's actually my biggest fear: that he'll have his nuance stripped away to satisfy fans complaining about his conflict and emotionalism...note I deliberately did NOT use the word "emo"!

[Darth Logos]

See, I can excuse a technology issue much easier than I can excuse a characterization problem.  The Star Trek fan in me can technobabble and BS just about ANYTHING technological even if it's completely crazy.

But I can't get around screwing up a character, which is why I need to see improvement with Rey and I do not ever again want to see Kylo made stupid or two-dimensional to prop up someone else or shut up people's complaining.  That's actually my biggest fear: that he'll have his nuance stripped away to satisfy fans complaining about his conflict and emotionalism...note I deliberately did NOT use the word "emo"!

To me, technology is a character. It is something that permeates a fictional universe. It's kind of why so many people were pissed off about the prequels being all shiny and more high tech than the OT. The technology seemed out of sync with the timeline.

[Darth Justicar]

Hmm...I guess that didn't bother me so much about the Prequels because, while some things would be well regulated, I can see infrastructure failure as a consequence of the Empire squelching innovation and directing funds to projects like the Death Star instead of upkeep.

[Darth Justicar]

I just found this interesting jewel of a statement from the audiobook Tarkin, that seems to hint at two things, as it comes from Palpatine's point of view: one, that the design of Starkiller Base may have been underway in the Imperial era even though not its construction--and two...that perhaps my reading of the light and symbolism involved in Kylo Ren's apparent final fall, as it relates to the imagery of Starkiller's destruction and rebirth as a living star, is indeed correct.

"Darth Plagueis has once remarked that the Force can strike back.  The death of a star didn't necessarily curtail its light, and indeed, Sidious could see evidence of that sometimes even in Vader: the barest flicker of persistent light."

It then goes on to suggest the construction of the Death Star was to snuff out that faint light of hope and make sure that the Force could not strike back.

Which of course didn't work well.

And in the words of Battlestar Galactica, "All of his has happened before.  All of this will happen again.  So say we all."

But it is my suspicion from this that Plagueis foresaw not just what was going to happen with Vader--but may even have seen ahead to the time of Starkiller Base and Kylo Ren.  Of course, if you think Plagueis is Snoke, then that really brings it full circle.  Even if Snoke is not Plagueis, it still seems like the kind of foresight Plagueis was generally capable of.

[Darth Logos]

See, I can excuse a technology issue much easier than I can excuse a characterization problem.  The Star Trek fan in me can technobabble and BS just about ANYTHING technological even if it's completely crazy.

But I can't get around screwing up a character, which is why I need to see improvement with Rey and I do not ever again want to see Kylo made stupid or two-dimensional to prop up someone else or shut up people's complaining.  That's actually my biggest fear: that he'll have his nuance stripped away to satisfy fans complaining about his conflict and emotionalism...note I deliberately did NOT use the word "emo"!

Ok...........use your technobabble to explain the idiot concept of a light whip.

[Darth Justicar]

Answer: Despite its name, the light whip has little in common with a lightsaber, other than the fact that it puts out a fierce glow and is so dangerous that it's hardly ever wielded by anyone other than a Force user.  It's in fact a plasma weapon, with an extremely thin center "wire" that emits the charge that heats the plasma and holds it in a "coherent" shape.

(I was forced to go with the plasma explanation on grounds that photons do not carry a charge.)

As a personal note, I don't like the light whip either but it tends to fit with my general dislike of comics and my overall annoyance at that character, who was probably basically drawn so they could have a female "Vader" in a really, really skintight outfit.  But there you have my technobabble.

[Darth Logos]

Answer: Despite its name, the light whip has little in common with a lightsaber, other than the fact that it puts out a fierce glow and is so dangerous that it's hardly ever wielded by anyone other than a Force user.  It's in fact a plasma weapon, with an extremely thin center "wire" that emits the charge that heats the plasma and holds it in a "coherent" shape.

(I was forced to go with the plasma explanation on grounds that photons do not carry a charge.)

As a personal note, I don't like the light whip either but it tends to fit with my general dislike of comics and my overall annoyance at that character, who was probably basically drawn so they could have a female "Vader" in a really, really skintight outfit.  But there you have my technobabble.

There's also the hiccup in your premise that the "whip" would not retract into the hilt. Plus, "turban babe" was not the only OC femme fatale to use a whip. If you read the Bane trilogy, Githany also used a light whip.  Which sucked because I really liked the character.

Yet again, another example of how Disney could have done it properly, and just said "The light whip is stupid and we're taking it out of canon, but the characters and story point shall remain."

[Darth Justicar]

If the whip is thin enough--let's say the width of fishing line, by some kind of Future Tech, then it could reel up into the hilt. That was the image I had.  Of course we still get back to the light whip being stupid, but that would at least rationalize it better than claiming it's actually related to the lightsaber.

[Darth Logos]

If the whip is thin enough--let's say the width of fishing line, by some kind of Future Tech, then it could reel up into the hilt. That was the image I had.  Of course we still get back to the light whip being stupid, but that would at least rationalize it better than claiming it's actually related to the lightsaber.

Kinda like a combination of these two variations of the MS-007 Gouf heat rod weapon system?


The first image depicts the original device which could ensnare, but also heat up to a point of cutting. The thinner version of the latter, was capable of grappling an enemy suit and electrifying it, and shorting out operational controls. The latter also made better design sense in that it was easier to conceive a 70' cable being fully spooled with the arm as opposed to 70' tentacle doing the same thing.

Mad points for delivering the best explanation of how the so called light whip works.

[Darth Justicar]

That's the general idea, of course with a lot of applied handwavium.

[Rapine]

"handwavium."

-1 for that one...lol

[Darth Logos]

That's the general idea, of course with a lot of applied handwavium.

Well it makes a helluva lot more sense than the stupid thing being a saber variant.