Star Wars universe does have lasers of all scales and power levels.
Yet literally no one uses them well on a personal scale.
The Jedi (and Sith for that matter) imbue it with a power of magical stone, and then…use it as a saber.
To balance this stupidity, stormtroopers, clones and droids all use slow, non-continuous energy blasters. With actual lasers, they could insta-kill any Jedi, but they cannot, because otherwise the movie wouldn’t exist.
Maybe I’m just old, but I can’t stand how magic the " kyber" crystals are in the rewritten sequel canon. In older legends canon, there was no “the crystal chooses the Jedi blah blah blah” which really makes it seem incredibly religious. You could use nearly any focusing crystal in a lightsaber, and Jedi would often choose a crystal that is sentimental or meaningful to them. There was little to no magic, and lightsabers were cheap and simple to construct. It was more that no one but a force-user could bring a laser-sword to a laser-gun fight and not die immediately.
I know I’m just not up with the times but I really loved old Star wars legends and how much emphasis it put on how these people who could use the force were normal people with exceptional abilities trying to interpret something much stranger and bigger than them (the force), and I feel like “kyber” crystals are a symptom of the very binary, new light vs. dark sequel canon which I find insanely reductive.
So uh yeah, I know I’m just old but it really bothers me.
P.S. Also isn’t the word “Kyber” just them bastardizing “Kaiburr” crystals (which were supposed to be rare lightsaber crystals)? I was pretty sure this was always the case.
I generally agree, with some nitpicks.
The old canon several times mentions that wielding a lightsaber is actually extremely difficult and unintuitive…
…because the ‘blade’ is literally weightless, that alone would throw off a lot of wielders of more conventional swords…
… but also because the saber, potentially as a byproduct of the ‘coherence field,’… produces strong, unituitive gryoscopic forces when moved or rotated at various angles and speeds.
…
The old explanation I remember is roughly that force sensitives essentially just intuitively know how to counteract this, to varying degrees of proficiency, but a non force sensitive, a non force user… they’d pick it up and awkwardly flail about with it as it seemingly gains and loses weight, is being pushed and pulled in crazy directions that make no sense compared to just, a physical sword or staff.
Sort of like trying to use a very, very poorly balanced real world melee weapon, but the weapon’s poor balance also actively changes, like its center of gravity just seemingly randomly alters as you move it.
Basically, a non force user fights the weapon, whereas a skilled force user understands it, and in a more physically tangible sense, literally allows the weapon to guide their combat movements and style, they know when to go ‘with’ it and when to go ‘against’ it, to achieve the actual desired motion.
This is kind of sort of depicted in the Mandalorian, with the Darksaber seemingly becoming exhaustively heavy, massive, and Mando has to… learn how to use it, how to work with it.
And also: yes, Han uses a lightsaber in the OT, but most of the early expanded universe did just explain that by saying he is actually force sensitive, that his absurd luck and piloting skill in various situations does mean he is actually a untrained force user, he just also is a stubborn ass who thinks the Force is bullshit, at least initially, lol.
…
But anyway, yes, they used to make lightsabers out of a wider variety of crystals, not just ‘kyber’… and yes, i also do remember many different variants of how ‘kyber’ was actually spelled.
For the life of me I thought its proper spelling was ‘khyber’ until i bothered to look it up in an actual wiki in the last couple of months.
That could be me misremembering, or maybe that was what I originally read decades ago now, or maybe what i am rembering got ‘telephoned’ through a bunch of people first, on some forum.
…Man now I kinda want to set up SWGEmu, hahahah!
Thanks for the clarification. I remember the gyroscopic weight stuff somewhat, but always sorta dismissed it since it felt like it was selectively used by authors and many of my favorites made little to no mention of it.
I haven’t had much desire to watch any of the new stuff since Force Awakens so I’m not up to snuff on the new stuff. Keep on enjoying it though! Makes me want to go back and read some of the best of legends.
I completely get what you mean on that.
Personally, I wish it was more prevalent… I think the main reason it isn’t, is that… its actually fairly difficult to write a description of … what this would be like, and it is also difficult to depict this visually, both in still and moving images.
Again this I will freely admit is my preference/opinion, but yeah, I really wish they had actually gone a bit further into this…
Like with Frank Herbert, Dune, and the basically bizzare combat style that comes with the daggers and personal shields.
The slow blade makes the cut, in that universe, literally, because the shields block things moving at high velocities, but not slow velocities.
I just love the shit out of… physically based, but playing by different rules, martial combat, hahah!
I also really like in say, Enders Game, where Ender has to essentially just learn/invent an entirely new paradigm of combat to work with zero G and the suits that constrict and paralyze theb part of your body that gets hit with whatever kind of weapons they use.
I think I am just gonna do that.
Somebody’s gotta tend to the old, sacred texts =P