this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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Star Wars Memes

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Hello there. Somehow, Star Wars memes have returned. It's not a trap, this is where the fun begins.

Technical note: if you're coming from another star system and are getting a "Subscription pending" message when trying to dock, that's just the console being slow to display the right message. The connection is already established. (Probably.)

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IMPORTANT

Do not post the "good friend" or similar copypasta

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Special days!

Friday and weekends: Caption contest. An image will be pinned, and we shall make captions for it and post them in the comments.

Wednesday: Theme day. We have Droids day, EU day, poem day, aliens day... Let the pinned post guide you. Memes with the theme are preferred.

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Other universes to visit:

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Separatist systems:

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Oh hey some real SW content for a change (perhaps):

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Our galactic citizens have requested more specific rules, so here are a few.

The general idea is, if you're looking here for rules, you're probably someone who doesn't need to have them spelled out. You're fine. But anyway:

  1. This is a community for Star Wars memes. This means typically screenshots of Star Wars media with some text or context that's meant to be funny and/or thoughtful. All SW media is welcome: movies, games, comic books, fanart... Other kinds of content, like video links or meta memes (about this community, or Lemmy), are fine as well, just keep it on topic.

  2. We are all friends here, and love (sometimes love to hate) Star Wars. Be nice to each other.

  3. As fans of fictional media, we can be passionate. If you very strongly disagree with something or someone, take a deep breath before reacting. Anger leads to the dark side!

  4. Everything in Star Wars has happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far away, and it's a rich universe of millions of words and millions of years of history. So current Earthly matters really shouldn't concern us here. In other words, leave politics, philosophies and convictions behind the door. This applies even if it's about something related to Star Wars.

  5. Original content is preferred. Reposts are fine, just please limit to a maximum of 3 per day, per citizen. It is recommended, but not required, to mark original memes as (OC) and reposts as (repost).

  6. Local mods are the Jedi council. They may take actions that are necessary to maintain peace and stability of the Republic, even beyond the rules outlined here. Follow their guidance.

  7. Regular rules of the Lemmy.world instance apply.

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[–] [email protected] 143 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Isn't it that Old Ben was thinking of highly trained clones and had pretty much no stormtrooper experience in decades?

Like, he'd been living in a hunting the middle of a desert for 20 years intentionally staying away from anything dangerous.

[–] [email protected] 159 points 5 months ago (9 children)

As usual the fans come up with a great answer to explain away poor writing.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 5 months ago

There's gawd damn laser swords, I'll rationalize anything else I need to.

It's still real to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvd3aEsThbc

[–] [email protected] 47 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Or people are too dumb to understand decent writing. The storm troopers destroyed the rebels in the opening scene. They killed almost every fighter in the battle of Yavin. The only time they didn't perform well is when intentionally letting Leia escape. Sure there's plot armor, but there's also an explanation for a lot of it.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They also sucked in Mos Eisley. They aren't trying to let them escape, nor are they trying to take them alive or anything like that. They completely give up the element of surprise by loudly shouting "blast them!" and then fail to hit anything despite having an entire squad of troops ready to open up on them.

That said, ESB shows them as being competent, and the only shots they miss are from long range and against targets with good cover. Sadly, the same cannot be said of ROTJ, as basically everything the empire does on Endor is idiotic and makes them look incompetent.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

as basically everything the empire does on Endor is idiotic and makes them look incompetent.

Which makes perfect sense, as by RotJ the empire had to rely on barely trained new recruits and recently promoted officials, because most of their veterans were dead - either by Vader-phyxiation, by "meetings with the Emperor" or straight up backstabbing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Also... I assume quite a few of their best and brightest were on the first death star. That was a large station...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Considering Tarkin, Sidious' right-hand man, died in that explosion, I'd say that's a safe assumption

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

If Tarkin was the right hand, would that make Vader the left hand? Ironic ...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (3 children)

For Leia, Vader had set the Stormtroopers on 'Stun'.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

They mean when they escape the death star and rescue Leia in ANH. Vader explicitly says he ordered to let them escape so they could be tracked to Yavin 4.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Or maybe you don’t understand the difference?

Clone troopers were highly trained and sometimes specialist trained clones of jango.

In the other hand, storm troopers are human “recruits” that are trained by suboptimal clones or left over clone troopers.

They are entirely different armies that were parts of mostly entirely different wars.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago (4 children)

and you HONESTLY think that was the plan at the time? That the storm troopers he was thinking of was the clone wars? That was already canon back then?

Or....did he just say 'clone wars' because it sounds spiffy and Lucas had absolutely zero thought put into it past that?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

The plan at the time was what the film explicitly said. They were devastatingly effective at taking the Tantive IV. They were devastatingly effective at destroying the sandcrawler (to the point that they couldn't disguise it as having been attacked by sand people). They were devastatingly effective at nearly hitting the protagonists enough times that they believed they were being shot at for real, when actually they were just being herded onto a ship with a tracker on it so they'd reveal the location of the rebel base they'd spend the first half the film failing to threaten or torture out of Leia. They were devastatingly effective at destroying the rebel's attack force against the Death Star, and were seconds away from destroying Yavin IV and the rebel base on it when someone used supposedly-extinct space magic to make what the film had previously described as an impossible shot against a tiny target.

The only time they miss is when the film says they did so on purpose.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

and you HONESTLY think that was the plan at the time? That the storm troopers he was thinking of was the clone wars? That was already canon back then?

Considering the very first drafts mention "Sith" and George had the idea of midichlorians way back then, I wouldn't ignore the possibility. Lots of things were either cut or went unmentioned until Episode I.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Sure why not? The universe he created was meant to be explored and opened up, he specifically avoided hemming himself into situations. They did a good job avoiding most retconning until Disney took over.

Sure lots was made up, but that’s literally what fiction is, so why are you upset about it…? Lmfao. This wasn’t a universe that was created for him like most other stories, it was a universe for others. Not everyone is going to understand the difference unfortunately though.

He was also general during the war and led platoons of clone troopers, he knew what they were capable of first hand.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (8 children)

ah...you are taking this as an attack. thats why you think I'm upset. It's all stupid fun dude. Pointing out stupid shit is just part of the fun. I like the movies as much as most of the people here.

But my original point stands. Lucas always just kinda....said things. Then the fans come along and (mostly in the books that don't count anymore) worked within what he said to flesh shit out for real. Then of course the prequel trilogy came out and he made up more shit to fit with what he said before. Some neat, like making the clone wars tie into the storm troopers....some we do not speak of.

It's not an attack on your fandom and nobody is upset :)

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 5 months ago (1 children)

In A New Hope, the only time stormtroopers miss is when they do so intentionally, when they're chasing the protagonists off the Death Star, and onto the Millenium Falcon, which has been fitted with a tracking device which they know will be taken straight to the rebel base. They easily overwhelm the guards on the Tantive IV at the beginning of the film even when only a few of them have made it through the breached airlock. The myth that stormtroopers miss comes from people not noticing the scene where Tarkin discusses intentionally letting the rebels escape so they can follow the tracking device back to their base.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It's sad that we don't really get to see Stormtroopers at their peak outside of that one scene on the Tantive IV and that Disney nu-canon has essentially embraced the meme of them being inaccurate.

I think the way the story is constructed clashes with the way movies are filmed for entertainment. We are explicitly told that the Stormtroopers are a force to be feared, and shown that exactly one time, but the narrative requires a bunch of nameless faceless mooks for the heroes to mow down during their action scenes because that's more entertaining, so the Stormtroopers fill both roles and it gets muddled along the way.

As for the Tusken sniper who took out Teemto on the podracing circuit, I'd chalk that up to a lucky shot. There were a few of them shooting, and it was a target rich environment, an he was the only one to get nailed in the engine and suffer a catastrophic failure despite it being a multi-lap race.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (13 children)

But we did see the Stormtroopers at their peak. That was the Clone Wars. During the first few years of the empire, the Stormtrooper army was made almost exclusively of clones. As more regular people were added, their frightening capabilities slowly decreased until, by RotJ, the Empire's army is made entirely of new recruits who promptly get their asses handed to them.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Regarding this I always wondered how Jedi are able to turn on/off their Jedi power in order to avoid being detected for so long

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm no star wars nerd, but if it's midiochlorians, then they're everywhere already.

If the Jedi isn't using/communing with them, it just blends into the background noise.

So when they went into hiding, they went to cities where it got lost in the noise, or incredibly isolated where one Jedi still wouldnt register on a planet wide scale even if it's Yoda.

Like, as long as they weren't in the space version of a subdivision, they wouldn't stick out. It had to be one extreme or another.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

There's also another option, which some Jedi did follow: completely cut yourself from the force. This results in being unable to use the force at all, but they still have all of their lightsaber training in a pinch.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The ahsoka novel actually partly covers this. Ben basically went into some form of deep meditation for decades.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Is there any indication that force sensitive people can be detected at a distance at all?

There are suggestions in Legends. The cave near Yoda is full of the dark side, and with Yoda living there, it looks neutral from a distance. There's also a device found that can scan someone and show their "force aura".

Disney canon hasn't gone that route. You can do a blood test for midichlorians. Jedi might be able to intuit someone's force sensitivity by watching and testing them (as a Bad Batch episode recently did). But there's nothing to indicate force sensitives can be detected at a distance, either by trained force sensitives or by technology.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Is there any indication that force sensitive people can be detected at a distance at all?

Loads of indication. Vader detects Luke at various points (and vice-versa). The very fact Sidious contacts Vader about Luke's force abilities without being prompted is a strong indication he could feel it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

But at the same time, you had a lot of moments where Jedi felt the death of a loved one, or where Anakin Ahsoka/Obi-Wan/Yoda felt him going to the dark side.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

spacemagic.gif

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

They spend a lot of time practicing to expand their mind and feel the Force. It's probably not too hard to figure out how to go the other way

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Sith have been doing it for eons.

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I haven't watched Ahsoka or Kenobi yet (probably never will... for either) but wouldn't one of those have resulted in Obi-Wan being familiar with stormtroopers over clone troopers?

But also, watch stuff like Andor or Rogue One or even some of the more OT-era animations. Stormtroopers are still terrifying if you aren't a protagonist with plot armor (that I guess is subconsciously using The Force to deflect shots). And this would have been less of a high stress battle and more an ambush/execution.

But also? Obi-Wan is clearly kind of a manipulative asshole. He took Anakin's son and basically trained him into an assassin to neutralize Vader and stop Palpatine. He also specifically did not tell Luke to maybe not have the hots for the cute princess hologram that he 100% knew was his twin sister.

Why would he say "Well, this could have been an ambush by those random people who have a history of ambushing stuff and fucking shit up?" versus "oh yeah. This is The Empire. You should totally go stop Vader". Also, he might be aware of the ethnic cleansing that Anakin did against the Tuskens and is extra trying to avoid a repeat of that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Maybe he was worried that Luke would go down the same path his father would, so he kept things vague. That was always my take on Old Ben -- he wasn't really guiding Luke to do anything, it was the Force. "Luke, your father was actually a dangerous madman who slew younglings. In fact, is the right hand man, that academy you were joining? It's Space Fascism, so definitely don't go and join it to be with your father." lol

On the topic of the other two -- Personally, I liked Kenobi. It has some sillier bits, but nothing IMO that isn't easily explained (as an example, there's a scene where young Leia is chased by mercenaries and she kinda dunks on them. People hate it. I think it was a clear example of her Force Sensitivity, so I don't mind it at all.) Its main shortcoming for me was the villains could have been better and Reva was a bit predictable. I didn't think she was as bad as the Internet did.

Ahsoka... I wanted to like. It had a lot of potential, most of my issues were that it seemed like they were filming a video game, but since we're not playing Ahsoka we end up just watching her interact with things we have no meaning for. Other than that, it was decent save for what they did to Sabine, which was just a disgrace to her character. Sabine was disappointing, over and over again. Overall, I think it has been my least favorite of the Star Wars shows as it has had the most visible quirks and awkward shots.

As a continuation of that story it's pretty decent and I'm excited for S2. But as a continuation of that story, the characters were not as strong as I felt they could have been. Time passed and people change, that's fine. This wasn't quite that though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Even if that's true, it doesn't change the point the bottom image is making.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

That he was underestimating the Sand People?

Doesnt it becomes clear pretty soon that he was underestimating the Sand People in general?

Like, legit asking, it's been at least a decade since I watched it.

But the way I remembered it was Obi overestimating stormtroopers because he lead an elite squad of clone troopers, and underestimating the primitive natives, because in any fight with him and troopers against them, they wouldn't stand a chance.

Also highlighting how much has changed since he was involved in such things.

Like, just because a character thinks something, doesn't make it true. Obi is an unreliable narrator, but viewers are in Luke's perspective thinking Obi has all that answers.

Just from a story telling perspective it makes sense. And is far from the only example.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Depends if you watched the Obi Wan show or not I guess