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INTRODUCTION: SO WHAT DO THE JEDI SAY AND DO IN THE ACTUAL CANON?
Welcome to part four of my Jedi In Canon citations project! It's been more than half a year since the last one, but a lot happened IRL for me and I went through a pretty hard stage of burnout on the supplementary stuff and needed to take some time away. But I've wandered back and found myself enjoying this again and Tumblr tells me they still find this project useful, so onwards I go!
As always, while you don't need to read them in order per se, at least skimming the notes for how this project is set up and what continuity is what may be useful if this the first one you've stumbled over. While each work in this series can stand on its own (and is done this way to keep track of what's been newly added), ultimately it's meant to be part of one large reference guide that will all be collated into one post someday. Someday someday someday. If one section seems thin, it might have more citations in a different work, I just add things into categories as I go. Some sections are super long and will eventually be more fine-tuned into better sub-categories, but for now they're there in the list and that's the important thing. Etc.
And, also as always, this still is not an attempt to force anyone to like the Jedi or to follow these elements of worldbuilding--you do you, babe. I'm just collating this stuff for those who want to use it for fic writing or references in writing meta posts or just find it interesting, and most of all because I had fun doing it!
HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE:
In this section, I will include many quotes from Star Wars Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade but I was somewhat selective in my choice of what to include, because the structure of the book is that of a character who is actively choosing to fall to the dark side and that warps her perspective, making her an increasingly extremely unreliable narrator as the novel goes on. I've done my best to include things that I feel fairly confident that aren't just Iskat's psychic connection to the dark side taking over that are lies being whispered in her ear, which means this guide will not be an accurate representation of what the book is about, but that's not the point of this guide--it's about what the Jedi themselves say and do.
Others may disagree about Rise of the Red Blade, but many times there are things like Iskat thinking that Sember thought she was a horrible student, meanwhile Sember makes a soul-deep confession as she's dying, not even realizing Iskat is there, saying she was a good Padawan. Or that Sember tells her directly, when Iskat confesses that she thinks she's broken, that none of them are perfect and Iskat is certainly not broken, she just has to work a little harder than most. Or Iskat is convinced the other Padawans hate her, but when she actually confronts one as an adult Inquisitor, they immediately trust her. A Jedi Master who was always kind to her tries to get her to see how deep she is in the dark, to tell her that they were trying to help her, that the dark side is lying to her and twisting things, but she's too far gone into the dark to hear him. A character who seems like a reasonable outside influence who encourages Iskat's mistrust of the Jedi, actually turns out to be a spy actively encouraging her into the dark side. Iskat thinks that no Jedi was willing to teach her, to guide her, to connect with her--right after Jocasta Nu just offered her an apprenticeship in the Archives.
For these reasons, while there is much in the book that's like, "The Jedi were just saying empty platitudes." or that they taught her to suppress her emotions or that a Jedi was being cold to her, I have not included them, because the structure of the book is such that I felt those things were consistently enough contradicted by what the other Jedi themselves said and did outside of Iskat's perspective, that it was evidenced she was falling to the dark side--and the dark side lies.
CONTENTS OF THIS GUIDE:
SECTION 1 - HOW THE FORCE WORKS
SECTION 2 - JEDI CULTURE & PHILOSOPHY & TEACHINGS
SECTION 3 - JEDI AS A PEOPLE
SECTION 4 - PSYCHIC SPACE WIZARDS DOING PSYCHIC SPACE WIZARD THINGS
SECTION 5 - JEDI TEMPLES
SECTION 6 - JEDI AND THE BIGGER GALAXY
SECTION 7 - EVERYTHING ELSE (REAL WORLD ANALYSIS + OTHER NOTES)