/sw/ - Star Wars★

There are thousands of religions in SW. Certainly human believes varies wildly.

The Empire? From all we could muster the official religion is no existant, probably it inherited the laicism of the Republic. That or it was openly atheist, since it's propaganda dismissed the Force as a superstition.

>That said, how does Sheev & Vader get away with being Dark Side users?

Palpatine wasn't publicy know as a Force user. Vader shenanigans were restricted to a small size of the navy/army. People even had doubts if Vader was a droid or something. He was just the mysterious guy.

We're talking about a galaxy of quintillions. Coruscant alone was supposed to have a trillion people, the Jedi, the most famous and active force using group was numbered in 10k. So people actively knowing about the jedi, dealing with them, seeing them was very low, that's why it was easy to the Empire dismiss them and the Force as myth in the short span of 20 years

>Word would get out, even if only through the military ranks. How does the Empire explain that "Every Jedi except this scary guy dressed in black were EVUL."

People there Vader was somekind of fallen Jedi or similar who sided with the Empire around the end of Clone Wars. Period. Also the Jedi were gone just like that. Poof! Tarkin considered Vader an antique, the last remnant of their religion ("The Jedi are extinct, their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion").

>>7318

Again, sense of scale. First, Palpatine justified his ballsack face and use of robes as the results of a jedi attempt against him ("The attempt on my life has left me scarred and deformed"), second, Palpatine became a recluse not long after the Empire was established. The mass of people barely saw or had acess to him. He was a distant father figure, people only remembered that his face was fucked due jedi wizardry/violence.

>The Jedi, whom held the galaxy's best interest for generations turned evil overnight and had to be utterly obliterated

Most people barely knew about the jedi, there was an active anti-jedi sentiment amongst many in the galaxy (JEDI KIDNAP BABIES! JEDI FUCKS WITH PEOPLE MINDS!), only a small elite knew about the jedi or even had dealings with them.

>The scary guy dressed all in black was the only one to side with me. He's my VP.

People scratched their heads with Vader, trying to figure who the fuck he was. All they know was that the Emperor vouched him, he had weird powers (with some knowing that was jedi like) that laser sword of his and if he kills you, he was covered by the Emperor's protection. Vader was the "giant space flea from nowhere" in the eyes of the military and the elite. Nobody really knew who the guy was, or why the Emperor gave so much power to that asthmatic guy in black.

>>7318

And more

>"I'm taking sole control over the galactic government now. Just me, for life. No elections

By the end of the Clone Wars he was basically a dictator, the change into Empire was a detail. The Senate voted him Emperor, and before all those emergency powers.

>>7315 (OP)

>how does Sheev & Vader get away with being Dark Side users

You have to take a step back and think about this from the perspective of an average person living in the Star Wars universe, rather than as a viewer who has been treated to a lot of Jedi-focused content. Most Star Wars media focuses on the Jedi, or Force users in general, and we're often exposed to things that a run-of-the-mill galactic citizen would not even hear about in their lifetime.

The teachings of the Jedi Order are not public knowledge. Most people don't understand the intricacies of Force use and can't tell the differences between the "dark side" or the "light side", or between a Jedi and a Sith. It all seems the same to them, and the few people who can tell the difference just view the Jedi and Sith as little more than competing sects of the same religion. Many people don't even believe the Force exists - if you remember ANH, Han Solo rejects the entire concept as "a lot of simple tricks and nonsense." Admiral Motti mocks Vader for his "sorcerer's ways" and calls his belief in the Force a "sad devotion" to an "ancient religion." Everyone from a lowly criminal smuggler to an Imperial admiral from a wealthy family thought the Force to be little more than superstition and magic tricks.

The political beliefs of the New Order were almost a secular religion during the heyday of the Galactic Empire. It was kind of meant to mirror how Stalinist countries from the USSR to the DPRK create personality cults and give transcendental meaning to social beliefs. As for Sidious and Vader themselves, they didn't broadcast their Force powers to the Galaxy. The Emperor went out of his way to hide it even when the consequences would have been pretty negligible (until DARK EMPIRE but that's it's own thread's worth of issues). Vader was to most people a symbol of discipline and punishment. They never even saw him using Force powers and his only connection to the Jedi of yore of any possible repute was that he carried a lightsaber. The members of the Imperial military who saw him break the laws of physics either knew better than to ask questions or naturally assumed he was a Jedi who had been persuaded away from treason against the Republic. Only the military seemed to be present for most of the feats Vader would be seen pulling off, and same goes for the inquisitors/hands in either canon.

>>7326

But the problem is that the Force is something observable, & measurable in the SW universe. It's a proven phenomena. Vader proved to Motti that the Force was real by choking him. If anything, Motti was being superstitious by stating that a proven phenomena belonged in the realm of faith & religion.

Despite what the internet says to the contrary, skeptics can be stubborn & stupid too.

>>7329

The Force was observable, but to the mass of people it was non-existent. Trained force users amounted to thousands in a galaxy quintillions and that during the heyday of Jedi Order.

During the New Order you could count hundreds at most.

>If anything, Motti was being superstitious by stating that a proven phenomena belonged in the realm of faith & religion.

Because it was that uncommon, also Motti was actively trying to mock/piss off Vader, not the he didn't knew about the Force. He was actually mocking Vader, who despite his powers couldn't retrieve the DS plans. The guy had memories of the Clone Wars, he knew about the Jedi

>>7329

The Jedi & Sith are very secretive and keep their secrets closely guarded though, so to the average citizen, even on Coruscant, they may only have heard rumours about the Jedi.

>>7318

>I'm taking sole control over the galactic government now. Just me, for life. No elections.

There are multiple parallels to this in real life. Every left-wing person you know would have elected Obama president for life.

>>7341

>True, but you have to admit that Obama is a handsome, charming, charismatic motherfucker. He also rode high on the "I'm not a racist, so I'll choose the black guy." vote. Sheev had neither of that.

he had something much better-being a winner of biggest war iin millenia

>>7342

There were worse wars in EU canon. Ones that didn't involve clones vs. droids fighting over trade disputes while the rest of the galaxy stayed at home.

>>7329

>>7341

There are trillions upon trillions of citizens in the galaxy but an insanely small percentage of them are Force sensitive, and even fewer become actual Force users. As >>7333 said, Force-using orders are extremely secretive and the overwhelming majority of people would go their entire lives without ever seeing the Force being used at all. "Proven real" doesn't matter if nobody has seen the proof.

The Jedi and Sith are viewed by the general populace as the same religion with two competing sides. As fedora tippy as it gets Atton's dialog in kotor II provide some good insight to this. The common person identifies a Jedi as a person with a laser sword who has weird powers. Most people's knowledge of Jedi aren't nuanced to know the difference between Jedi and Sith because it's rare they'll hear anything but stories not even from the original source more than likely. That's why the wars between the Sith and Jedi are often referred to as "Jedi Civil Wars".

>>7350

That's not really a good analogy, though. It's more like gift dropping birds that appear once on a random part of the planet, then disappear again right after, sometimes with years in between visits. Your "cargo cult" analogy doesn't take into account the massive disparity between the rarity of Force-users and the sheer size of the Galaxy and its inhabitants. Not only are there mere thousands of Jedi (at most) to tens of quadrillions of regular people, your average civilian never leaves his home system all his life. Most never even get farther than orbit of their home planet. Reliable, verifiable bits of knowledge about the Jedi are few and far between for most people.

>Why is the Force treated in religious overtones? Religion requires faith. Using the Force is an observable & measurable action

Because the biggest and most important groups of Force users treated it as a religion, gave it religious overtones. Darth Plagueis was an exception by approaching the subject in a scientific manner. Remember how Kreia considered it an uncaring and amoral God thing? On how the Jedi and Sith referred to the "Will" of the Force (which one would either submit or bend it to his own will)?

>>7315 (OP)

Casual plz. Humans in general within SW are a huge majority population within the galaxy and are divided into countless subcultures each with its own philosophies and theologies, even within the Jedi they had their own philosophies and theological views about the nature of the force, such as whether it was a sentient deity or non-sentient force of life, or human ex-jedis who became Revanchists. Most alien species weren't as numerous as humans so the majority of an alien species would often share the same few sets of beliefs among their kind, like Ithorians either following the theology of their Mother Jungle or a non-denominational adherence to the idea of a Living Force. Its a big fucking galaxy.

Also the general populace of the galaxy, that borders on the trillions (maybe even more), probably doesn't have the same level of understanding about "dark side users/siths" since they were practically extinct, so they wouldn't have any idea about it except for a few historians or scholars, and even then Sheevy Boy was pretty hush-hush about his practices and kept the galaxy at large from finding out about his secret dark side cults. Battlefront for the PSP back in the day featured a quest on the matter where the rebels are sent to one of Sheev's secret dark side cult worlds where he takes in young force-sensitives and trains them for inquisitor shit or just to be dark side followers (or potential replacement apprentices).

>>7329

Motti was more like a redditor who doesn't really care whether he was right or wrong. He just wants to troll and be smug.

>>7360

>Casual plz.

Don't be an assumptive ass.

>Humans in general within SW are a huge majority population within the galaxy and are divided into countless subcultures each with its own philosophies and theologies

That's nice. We still don't have mention of one major human religion or even a multi-species religion while Wookiepedia is filled with the philosophy of Ithorians & Twilek beliefs. Despite your deepest lore of knowledge, you never answered the simple question of "Why is that?"

Instead of gloating "HURR DURR I KNOW MOAR SW THAN U." You should explain that while it's okay to invent the religious tenants of hammer head aliens, it's another matter to discuss the religious practices of humans in space. You can do it in a separate SF book or film, but not in a multinational, multimedia, billion dollar franchise like SW. That's because someone in the public arena is gonna bitch about not having space Christians or space Muslims. That's a battle Lucasfilm (& now Disney) would rather not fight because it would be ugly and in the end, nobody would win. So they keep human religious practices nebulous and say "THA FORCE" for a general spiritual catch-all.

OP's questions as to how does a space army function without space chaplains and how can Palpy & Vader run a galaxy when they're clearly demonically evil will never be addressed by The Powers That Be. And that's a huge hole in SW apocrypha that you just can't fill with your expansive knowledge of the PSP version of Battlefront.

>>7384

idk man the pope dresses purely in white robes, perhaps he was going for that aesthetic. Burn victims prefer loose, breathable clothes as well afaik. Vader wasn't too different from standard empire design

>>7384

Palpatine didn't go out much so he didn't need to dress to impress the public. The people he did want to impress, his military governors and officers, were hand picked to be as conniving, back-stabbing, and motivated by their eagerness to brown nose him as possible. A plain black tarp helped him melt remain out of the way and dissimulated when he had to move about in daylight and let him be menacing during a private audience.

I don't know how the EU addressed Palpatine's PR, but the DU tries to justify it by explaining that he became very reclusive after crowning himself Emperor. His nasty ass prune face and jet black sorcerer robes don't bother people because official Imperial propaganda never shows him that way. He's always depicted as wearing fancy robes like he did as Supreme Chancellor and his face is doctored up by hologram photoshop to look younger and handsomer than reality.

Vader looked like a demon lord because his capacity is acting as Palpatine's enforcer. Intimidation and cowing are central to his duties. He's not a public figure who actually appears on recruitment posters and takes center stage in holo vids waving around his lightsaber as some kind of folk hero for the masses. When Vader shows up, it's like a visit from the Secret Police and looking like a friendly advisor wouldn't serve that purpose.

Plus the whole "Sith are edgelords" description is kind of inevitable given that they're big believers in the power of fear, anger, and hatred. Sheev and Vader truly think that leveraging fear brings about stability and political peace (even if metaphysical peace is a lie according to the Sith Code).

>>7401

But Vader does appear on recruitment posters. Fucking people up is his job description and his appearance works well for that.

>>7410

>But Vader does appear on recruitment posters

Does he? I've seen a few fan-created ones featuring Vader, but nothing in-universe. If you look at books set during the height of the Empire, like the Han Solo trilogy, he's depicted as a mysterious enforcer figure. At the end of book 2 in that trilogy, Han sees Vader choke out an Imperial commander and doesn't know what he's looking at; it's only later that another character suggests that it might have been Vader.

>>7414

From what I've seen, he doesn't. Only time I've ever seen him on one is in all those propaganda posters featured in Disney's Rebels.

>>7342

>he had something much better-being a winner of biggest war iin millenia

And Obama didn't?

>>7445

No.

>>7329

>Despite what the internet says to the contrary, skeptics can be stubborn & stupid too.

Ironically enough the internet showed me how stupid skeptics can be.

>>7445

No he didn't. We're still stuck in Afghanistan and left Iraq an unstable democracy that got shitfucked by ISIS.

>>7343

>There were worse wars in EU canon.

not recently. the closest big as fuck war was new sith wars iirc, almost 1000 before clone wars

>>7518

Is that the war from SWTOR?

>>7520

in fact it is.

>>7537

In fact it isn't, you trackless faggot.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/New_Sith_Wars

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cold_War

>>7539

>>7541

It would be fun if we had a thread about wars and military shit in SW. Maybe even weapons. Like our own little slice of /k/.

>>7542

Well, start one then. I don't have the images for it.

>religion in SW

>there will never be anything made around the Pius Dea era

>no delicious SW ripoff of W40k with purging, fanatism and delicious human expansionism against alien scum

It's really sad.

>>7325

The Senate was abolished about 20 years later just before the Battle of Yavin.

>>7578

Write it yourself, you defeatist faggot. We have a thread for that.

>>7541

i fucked up