A More Civilized Q&A - March 2021

Great discussion as always, civilians. Your exploration of the Darth Jar Jar idea really reminded me of something from the Foundation series. Spoilers for that, but a character called The Mule is basically this fool, almost a jester, but he's called the Mule because he's a genetic anomaly. He can basically control people's minds, and it's revealed that he turned the wheels of the plot at the end of Foundation and Empire. By the next book, he's maneuvered himself into a de facto emperorship.

KassaNova

Thank you for this. This is my first patreon and I was lost trying to find this.

oh genius! thank you so much!

Noah Bogart

You can add it to your podcast app of choice with the private RSS feed in the My Membership tab.

Love this. Can you put these episodes in the main feed? Love to listen from my podcast app of choice.

Noah Bogart

One day a clown went to a doctor and complained that he was depressed because nobody liked him. The doctor said, "You should go see Jar-Jar Binks, he's a street performer who shoots water out of his ears. He'll cheer up anybody." And the clown said, "But doctor... Meesa Jar-Jar Binks."

the process of a youngling building their first lightsaber adds more fun wrinkles to this, but that's spoilers for 2023 i suppose

Luin

So one thing I felt got a little overlooked in the lightsaber conversation is how troubling it is the Jedi basically teach children to worship a weapon. "This weapon is your life." It has the same feeling to me as giving a child soldier an AK-47 and telling them to take it to bed with them every night and to treat it like a treasured object. It just makes them more willing to use them. You can argue that the Jedi teach restraint, but thats not good enough. When you give anyone access to lethal force at any time that they always carry around with them it just encourages its use. We see that with modern police who are adults, giving that sort of power to children is unconscionable. I get the real reason is that they want to sell lightsaber toys, but it just highlights to me how confused the Jedi philosophy is when the teaching we always see revolves around the use of a lethal weapon. Maybe they spend all the rest of their time in ethics classes but we never see it.

Daniel Barnett

My favorite piece of “evidence” for Darth Jar Jar is the fact that Jar Jar being a bumbling fool and then turning out to be a secret force genius rhymes really well with Yoda going from being a trickster swamp frog to Luke’s master. V happy to hear y’all talk about this amazing theory!

Keigen Rea

a 99% Invisible episode of mini stories included details about the movie novelization industry, specifically that the novelizations are 1. written based on the script alone and 2. often include additional details and stories that the writer makes up to fill out the novel. This may explain how the Huk War got written into the novelization. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mini-stories-volume-9/

David A Hicks

I have to post about Tag & Bink.. which are literally the Rosencrantz & Guildenstern of Star Wars: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Tag_%26_Bink Explicitly noted as non-canon but still published by the Lucasarts industral complex.

poetfox can deadlift 300lbs

I need to know what Jar Jar’s thoughts are on infrastructure week

RE: Darth Jar Jar theory. I think that even Star Wars buffs often discount how closely George Lucas keeps his ideas to his chest. Sure, he's open about inspiration, but there are many strange secrets remaining even about the original trilogy, whether that's "Obi-Wan" as a title vs. "Darth" as a first name or the strange case of never-before-seen deleted scenes (https://twitter.com/ThomasAllvin/status/1117504290548006912 https://twitter.com/StarWarsObscura/status/1376735695402897425). In Episode I, there are numerous cases of strange animations Jar Jar makes in the background that seem to correspond with force ability, especially during his visit to Tatooine. Even early promotional material leading to the film overly focused on Jar Jar's mysterious past. Then, of course, Dooku's role in Attack of the Clones would have been perfectly set up for a turn of Jar Jar revealing himself to Obi-Wan. I never for a second thought a "Darth Jar Jar" would have been present in the sequel trilogy (let's remember J. J. Abrams' limited imagination) but I do believe the idea was at one point real, then dropped cold. Aside from all the funny memes, the topic is still worth investigating. Anyway, forgive me for proselytizing, I'm just excited for y'all to dig into this series further! :)

Patrick Kay

Quick question about questions! If we sent in a question for the March Q&A, but it wasn't answered, should we re-submit it for April? Or should it be assumed to "still be in the queue"? Or are re-submissions discouraged?

Joseph Oliveira