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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Qui-Gonn clearly gets it through the spine. Sabine? Either through a lung, or a gut shot just beneath the ribcage.

I've already addressed that.

Timestamp: 2023/10/16 03:47:46

Getting stabbed by a lightsaber almost anywhere in the torso, especially the stomach, should be fatal. They cauterize flesh. Sabine was stabbed where her liver or intensines should be located at. At the very least she should have needed a prolonged dive in a bacta tank and possibly a few new organs or colonoscopy bag.

Stomach wounds are easily survivable. You may have some digestion and nutritional problems after, but you’d still be alive.

Lungs? You’ve got two. So again, definitely a debilitating wound, but with medical attention, and a prosthetic lung? Really not that much of a problem.

With Ahsoka being on-scene pretty much immediately, there’s first aid on hand, possibly some form of Bacta patch, then fly her straight to the hospital.

So…no. Lightsaber to the gut or stomach shouldn’t be inevitably fatal. At all.

Look at the treatment that saved Fennec Shand from a close range blaster to the gut. That treatment was done in the equivalent of a back street clinic, and she survived just fine.

The cauterisation is likely what allowed her to survive in the short term. No bleeding, no wound to reopen when being moved, and any nasties in the gut and stomach not making it into the blood stream, so no Peritonitis. Which as the former owner of a ruptured appendix I can assure you is absolutely not fun at all.

The mental gymnastics absolutely astound me. 'Oh it wasn't fatal, she was stabbed in the lungs.' With a weapon that's made of pure energy. What was I thinking? Of course Sabine would be fine.

Yes. Because she had but a single lung. And received no medical treatment whatsoever. She was just stabbed one second, then walked it off.

Didn’t she.

Oh no wait that’s not the case at all.

Clean wound, more or less immediate first aid, and a swift means to get to more permanent medical care.

Her recovery is oddly swift, no argument there. But so far we we’re at “I’ve just decided such a stabbing should’ve been instantly lethal”.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Her recovery is oddly swift, no argument there. But so far we we’re at “I’ve just decided such a stabbing should’ve been instantly lethal”.

Nope. We're at the meeting point of "why doesn't Shin bother finishing off her clearly still-alive opponent" and "I'm sure the writers could have come up with a whole host of other scenarios that achieve the same character and plot goals without leaving a significant number of people wondering how another character survives a pretty lethal-looking wound with no real repercussions". It's the second point that's most egregious to me.

Hmm. Probably because Ahsoka was just arriving in the shuttle?

A fully fledged Jedi. On her case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbN7Vgh76WM

2:45. Here comes the Cavalry. Shin legs it. Fight or flight, she chose flight.

The second point I’ve covered. Folks not liking explanation and evidence does not mean there’s no explanation or evidence.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Second, Maul’s blade appears to have been lodged in Qui-Gonn for a longer period. Referring back to the movies opening scenes, we see that whilst a Lightsaber will cook whatever it’s slotted into, it’s not a flash fry, for want of a better term.

I don't know why anyone is continuing to debate with MGS. He flat out lied and now he's actively contradicting himself.

We've gone from the lightsaber cooked Qui-Gonn, but it ~magically~ didn't do so to Sabine.

Edit: Corrected name.

I thought it was "lightsabre struck Qui-gon's spine and heart" whilst Shin is the lung/kidney region.

Sabine, not Shin.

And I’m not arguing that at all. Indeed if you’d care to read my response to your earlier comment, you’ll note I conceded I was wrong about Sabine getting a quick in and out.

My argument is being stabbed through the spine, and stabbed either in the guts or a single lung just aren’t the same injury. At all.

Nor is there any evidence for your own claim a gut shot would be fatal.

 Overread wrote:
I thought it was "lightsabre struck Qui-gon's spine and heart" whilst Shin is the lung/kidney region.

That is absolutely correct, but one of his arguments in favor of Qui-Gon dying was the duration of the stabbing which has now been dropped since Shin was stabbed for roughly the same time frame.

Edit: Removed quote. I'm not arguing with someone that constantly lies.

What lie? You provided evidence to counter my claim, I corrected my claim as I was in error.

That’s….that’s not a lie. That’s being mistaken.

So I’m down to “the injury locations were, biologically, very different, and here’s why a gut shot like Sabine’s is far from automatically fatal. Grievous, yes. Fatal, no”.

I await your rebuttal.

Shin could have just... pulled the saber upwards rather than pull it back, bissect Sabine that way, and would have had enough time to flee, really.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Shin could have just... pulled the saber upwards rather than pull it back, bissect Sabine that way, and would have had enough time to flee, really.

Shhhhh, don't say that! You can't use logic in this debate, only blind handwavium. He'll probably say it's because it wouldn't be family friendly and leave it at that, even though we saw Thanos get sliced in half by Ultron/Vision in What If and Darth Maul already got cut in half in Phantom Menace.

Cyel wrote:
Andor and in some parts a few video games tried to develop it into a different direction successfully but I think it was despite what the setting is in general, not thanks to it.

Consensus about Andor with friends is it could be any Sci Fi show, it just happens to be Star Wars. Space fascists showing how it sucks to be alive. Could have been rebadged into all sorts of things.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Shin could have just... pulled the saber upwards rather than pull it back, bissect Sabine that way, and would have had enough time to flee, really.

Shhhhh, don't say that! You can't use logic in this debate, only blind handwavium. He'll probably say it's because it wouldn't be family friendly and leave it at that, even though we saw Thanos get sliced in half by Ultron/Vision in What If and Darth Maul already got cut in half in Phantom Menace.

I think it just harkens to how SW has always treated light sabres more like swords than beams of particle energy. There are a lot of situations where a laser sword could be used to FAR more devastating effect. Heck Clone Wars at least gave us a few scenes of using them as "lets cut through the wall" movements.

Another angle could be that she didn't want to do an upper sweep because that would leave her wide open to getting a slash right across her own gut in death-throw retaliation. Pulling back left her able to better counter. Of course the counter argument to that is she could have slashed down.

I mean heck that fight alone has several "I'm going to spin around and show you my back" moves that are totally nuts in any sword play let alone with a laser sword. And yet that's something we also associate with SW fights

 Bobthehero wrote:
Shin could have just... pulled the saber upwards rather than pull it back, bissect Sabine that way, and would have had enough time to flee, really.

This was what jumped out at me. It would have been easier to remove her lightsaber in any way other than straight-out-backwards-without-widening-the-hole. It looks contrived the same way all the lightsaber chops on the zombie STs that didn’t remove heads or limbs looked contrived. The combat was good up until then, and suddenly feels contrived and phony.

If Ahsoka was just about to show up and save Sabine, why bother with the stabbing at all? Have Shin disable or disarm Sabine only for Ahsoka to stay the killing blow. Instead we get gentle/incompetent Shin, Iron Guts Sabine, and Book of Boba Fett level stakes.

trexmeyer wrote:

I don't know why anyone is continuing to debate with MGS. He flat out lied and now he's actively contradicting himself.

I personally find his out of thin air justifications wildly entertaining. I admire the passion, even if I don't understand it.

 Overread wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Shin could have just... pulled the saber upwards rather than pull it back, bissect Sabine that way, and would have had enough time to flee, really.

Another angle could be that she didn't want to do an upper sweep because that would leave her wide open to getting a slash right across her own gut in death-throw retaliation. Pulling back left her able to better counter. Of course the counter argument to that is she could have slashed down.

I might have worded things weird, I meant Shin stabs Sabine, then slashes up with her saber to cut everything in the way. She would have destroyed Sabine's saber after splitting her head in two.

'bit gruesome, but either way, that seems to be the ideal course of action to ensure your enemy is dead and can't retaliate, all the while being quick enough as a motion that Shin would have escaped.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Shin could have just... pulled the saber upwards rather than pull it back, bissect Sabine that way, and would have had enough time to flee, really.

Another angle could be that she didn't want to do an upper sweep because that would leave her wide open to getting a slash right across her own gut in death-throw retaliation. Pulling back left her able to better counter. Of course the counter argument to that is she could have slashed down.

I might have worded things weird, I meant Shin stabs Sabine, then slashes up with her saber to cut everything in the way. She would have destroyed Sabine's saber after splitting her head in two.

'bit gruesome, but either way, that seems to be the ideal course of action to ensure your enemy is dead and can't retaliate, all the while being quick enough as a motion that Shin would have escaped.

Ahh true there, I was thinking slicing up and taking off most of her shoulder, but you're right if she went up and went through the head that would work.

I wonder if its a force thing? Not Force, but actual energy of moving the blade. We know when they connect there's force and whenever we see them using lightsabres to cut with there "seems" to sometimes be a level of physical force needed to push through. However at the same time we've also seen a lot of effortless slashes too.

Heck who knows perhaps its even just down to muscle memory and training or something that makes people avoid " slice their skull in two"

 Overread wrote:
Heck who knows perhaps its even just down to muscle memory and training or something that makes people avoid " slice their skull in two"

Well, it's down to the writer finding value in Sabine losing in a way that leaves more than her pride injured.

But if you want to be open to an in universe explanation, you can find acceptable reasons for a lot of the stabbings to make sense. Maul for instance has an audience. He could have totally sliced up Qui-Gon, but he dedicates exactly as much time to the task as is physically necessary. After that he wants to see and enjoy Obi-Wan's reaction. We could criticize him in the same way as Shin. Qui-Gon is still breathing after the fight. Who knows how he might yet interfere in the upcoming fight with Obi-Wan? So why doesn't Maul massacre the feth out of him, just to be sure?

Explanations are easy to find, if only you want to. Maul is confident that the job is done. Maul is confident that a crippled, dying Jedi isn't a problem if he wasn't one while he was still in fighting condition. Maul wants to drink in Obi-Wan's emotions as close to the moment when the unthinkable happens as possible. Maul wants to prove his skill and wants a clean kill just to demonstrate his mastery of the lightsaber.

While Star Wars isn't very graphic and we know mostly droids and ugly aliens get sliced apart because somebody has to think of the children, we do get Anakin happily slashing and slicing Tusken on his murder spree. You could ask the question, what's the difference? Ani feels unbridled rage. Maul feels cold hatred. Different emotions, different motivations, and thus different fighting styles, down to the killing blow.

You could ask the same for Shin. Who is Sabine to Shin? Not an equal, perhaps not even an upstart, but a talentless apprentice who has no business at all swinging a lightsaber. Is it necessary for Shin to massacre the feth out of Sabine? You could consider that Shin's motivation in the fight isn't to best or kill Sabine, which is a foregone conclusion, but to stroke her own ego by demonstrating her superior fighting skill and beat Sabine with as much precision as possible because it's the thing that sets them apart. Another thought is that, even if Shin makes the fight about Sabine and knows her well enough for the thought to make sense, Shin might be inclined to exhibit all her skill and martial art to humiliate Sabine as a both a Mandalorian and Jedi apprentice. A clean kill might just be superior to a sure kill depending on motivation.

Plenty of possibilities, some if which may not even apply since I'm not going to rewatch the scenes for this post. That's not the point I want to make, even if it's meant to set the mood.

I notice that the extremes of this discussion are a willingness to come up with explanations even for the most out there things on one end and derision of the idea that anything but the one, perfect way of handling a scene is at all possible. My take, prompted by creeping-deth87's stated inability to understand MDG's stance, is that people tend to be comfortable looking to suspension of disbelief as the one overruling principle that decides whether a scene makes sense or not. If the movie or show up to that point provides what's needed for that suspension, it gets a pass. If not, the scene doesn't work both in execution and intent. While it's still a somewhat subjective evaluation, execution can usually be quantified and criticized fairly easily. After all, it's all there to be watched and rewatched, zoomed in, run in slow motion, and analyzed frame by frame. Intent is not quantifiable, because you don't know the writers' and director's train of thought when they composed a scene. It's entirely subjective how much you get out of intent by pondering the various possibilities that these people had in mind, and prone to thinking in directions they never even entertained.

As I see it, relying on execution or intent to the exclusion of the other leads nowhere but to denying either the problems or solutions that go with a questionable scene. It's comfortable because you only need to look at things from your preferred angle, but I'm not of the opinion that it provides you with anything resembling the complete picture. I wouldn't even lobby for an unjustified middle ground to get a compromise for the sake of avoiding commitment to a verdict on whether a scene makes sense or not. But I do believe that asking whether a writer's idea for a scene may not have transitioned to the screen to such a degree that the original meaning got altered and no longer makes sense, and extending the benefit of the doubt because of it is as called for as taking a hard look at the execution and questioning how a completely screwed up scene could have originated in a fully thought out idea.

I like this approach because it still provides the full breadth from total nonsense to justifiable idea implemented badly, but also allows for nuance and options in the middle instead of binary choice of sucky/okay.

@Geifer, my derision, take it!.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Shin could have just... pulled the saber upwards rather than pull it back, bissect Sabine that way, and would have had enough time to flee, really.

This was what jumped out at me. It would have been easier to remove her lightsaber in any way other than straight-out-backwards-without-widening-the-hole. It looks contrived the same way all the lightsaber chops on the zombie STs that didn’t remove heads or limbs looked contrived. The combat was good up until then, and suddenly feels contrived and phony.

If Ahsoka was just about to show up and save Sabine, why bother with the stabbing at all? Have Shin disable or disarm Sabine only for Ahsoka to stay the killing blow. Instead we get gentle/incompetent Shin, Iron Guts Sabine, and Book of Boba Fett level stakes.

Keep in mind Shin’s mission. Recover The Map from Republic hands. That was paramount to her and Baylan’s current employer. Her sole purpose for being on Lothal in the first place.

She stabs Sabine, because Sabine would’ve been capable of pursuing her. The stab was to stop that. As we see in the clip I posted just above, Ahsoka was just pulling up at the time.

I’d argue that had Shin made a proper “you can’t get deader than that!” job of it, which in the circumstances would be the work of seconds (off with the head, maybe the limbs as well for shock value), that would only gain her one thing. Immediate, and unrelenting, pursuit by a very, very pissed off former Jedi. In a hyperspace capable shuttle. Who could easily call in those handy-dandy E-Wings we inexplicably only saw the once.

Leave Sabine possibly still alive? You’ve now left that pissed off former Jedi with a choice to make. Get straight after you, or check her friend and (not sure if Shin knew this bit though) former Padawan, seeking medical attention.

Which decision is genuinely the best to actual complete your mission? Which was the smarter move?

That’s a real stretch, MDG.

Is it? She had the MacGuffin. And Ahsoka was right there.

Leaving Sabine potentially still alive, Ahsoka is given a choice in her next action. Pursue Shin, or give first aid to Sabine. And whilst it would be a possibility, at that point Ahsoka wouldn’t know for certain Shin had recovered the map, putting further emphasis on checking Sabine first.

If she pursues Shin, nothing is lost in leaving Sabine not entirely completely for sure dead. And so Shin is no worse off. But if she stops to assist Sabine? Shin can make a seemingly clean get away.

That’s not a stretch at all.

Removing an arm or both legs would slow down Ahsoka even more, keep Sabine off their tail at least a few more hours (!), and not risk an instant Qwi Gonn kill like a torso shot.

Face it, she wasn’t some battlechess master placing a surgical strike for maximum long term benefit. That’s not Shin’s character, for as little as we get to know her character.

I don’t disagree. The decision I’m arguing for would be a reactionary one.

She has the item, her immediate pursuer is down, and an unknown quantity of enemy reinforcements have arrived. Getting the heck out of dodge was a valid move. Leaving Sabine alive, or at least not hanging around longer than was absolutely necessary makes sense.

What we can’t really take into account is Force Stuff, like Shin perhaps being able to sense it was just Ahsoka in the shuttle. It’s not demonstrated on screen, and I feel would just be a point of contention for the sake of having a point of contention.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I’d argue what we see of Shin across the series is a young Force user not entirely confident in their own abilities.

Not crushed with doubt or burdened with indecision, but not quite the full shilling in the self confidence department.

Which may be why Baylan cut her loose in the end. Not in a “finally I can get shot of the dead weight”, more “it’s time you left the nest”

 Scrabb wrote:
@Geifer, my derision, take it!.

It's good to be loved! Or reviled? I can never tell the difference.

Lightsabers are considerably less deadly since Disney took over.

Reva got stabbed twice and survived. She stabbed the Grand Inquisitor, and he was fine after a day or two. Sabine, totally fine after a day or two.

Anakin got hit twice during two fights and lost limbs!

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ignore Me!

Now you've confused me between this and the Rumourengine thread.