She escaped the destruction of the EU by hiding in an Infinite Backpack!

I concur.
 
There is no need for me to be snarky, and I apologise to Patriot unreservedly.
 
It makes me seem a tad hypocritical, in fact, and I'm better than that.
 
I'm big enough to admit I made a mistake publically.
 
Marcy

You're too focused on the game engine and mechanics and not looking at the bigger picture. Who cares if one side is right or not. That's not the issue. Neither side is listening to the other, both sides failed to work out an issue and the story suffered for it. THAT is what is important here, not who is a murderhobo or who is being heavy handed.

All I'm saying is Upgrades can go on forever, downgrades can't ever make a pool zero, if you got no dice that can be downgraded it stops, that's all I'm saying, that's it, nothing more.

10 pages? Really? Go me!
But seriously, ThePatriot, my first post actually asked for advice, including whether I should do a retcon. I'm pretty sure that indicates I myself am unwilling to let my in-the-moment ruling stand.
There' been some good discussion here. I've taken the advice of some. I think it's time we shut this down, now.
Thank you.

I believe it was the Skill Monkey that gave this advice. Look at which dice produced the results. Since a wash is still a failed check, look at which of the negative dice brought results. If it was a Setback die that canceled a success, then the attempt failed because of whatever environmental factor put the setback into the roll. If it's a red die for active opposition, then the other guy stopped you. 
All your green dice coming up blank? Perhaps this particular task required a particular technique, and you've been making it on instinct (Characteristic) all this time. 

Those situations were reversed in order, though. The GM decided not to resolve it via the dice because, "hey, you shoot a guy with a blaster, he's dead, end of story." Up to this point, the players' communication had seemed complete and concise, and the GM's call was good.
 
The situation then dissolved because the player hadn't fully thought through the situation (or had perhaps miscommunicated) and GM was trying to set an example. It could have been resolved easily in any number of ways, but now probably requires the GM and player talking to each other to make sure that this sort of occurrence is less frequent in the future, and when it does happen, it can be made less painful. 

Yeah, but he said "I shoot him with my blaster." 
 
If it was a miscommunication, it could have (should have) been handled appropriately by two adults who are trying to play a game together. But I'd have made the same call at the outset: "Okay, he's dead. Carry on." 
 
If the player then said, "Wait, hold on, I didn't mean I wanted to kill him. I wanted to shoot at him," or, "I just wanted to wing him," or, "I just wanted to roll the dice," or, "can we let the dice tell the story." Those would all be fine requests and, if the player will wanted to roll his dice, I would totally let him. 
 
All the while questioning his character's reason for whipping out his blaster...

I think the question should be "What happens in this game when a character makes an attack with a blaster?" The use of the various dice results can easily mean that the declared attack does no significant damage but instead disarms the opponent, startles them (Setback dice), damages a piece of scenery, or has some other dramatic effect. In this game, the intent to do any of those things is not declared ahead of time. Rather, they are determined after the declaration of action by the results of the dice. The character might have been going for some sort of trick shot and hoping for the Triumphs to pull it off without killing the guy, but without the dice roll, the GM did effectively remove an element of player agency.

It's confusing, I know, but here are their pictures.
 
 
This is Gary, killed by Luke Skywaker:

 
And this is Garry, Gary's twin brother, killed by Lando Calrissian and his murderous band:

 
Both were unique individuals, and both will be missed and forever memorialized. 

You moron, you switched them around!

By normal standards, the player's response was unreasonable, possibly psychopathic. 
 
This does not justify the GM's ensuing actions, though they certainly do go a long way towards explaining them.
 
That about sums up my feelings on the matter.

Yeah, I'm out too guys.
 
Look, both parties were wrong. The player was not clear enough, the GM was too heavy handed and then didn't allow a mulligan when the player clarified his position. It could easily be cleared up with a bit of communication and a desire to put story over ***** waving.

And that's completely true.
 
But if the player is unfamiliar with this style of play, and he clearly was, then cutting the player off at the knees is probably not the best response either.
 
That said, as I tried to point out in my first post...the people involved should be less involved with placing blame, and more worried about where they go from here.  How you process this kind of thing going forward is far more important than getting caught up in mudslinging.

And this looks like a thread that should be deleted.

Well, thank goodness we're playing a hard, reality based combat simulation game. 
 
. . . . oh, wait.

Gahhh! Too many nested quotes! 
 
To the topic at hand: get players involved in the narrative, and you can avoid these sticky situations. 
 
Player: "I shoot him with my blaster."
GM: "Okay, go ahead and narrate his death at your hands." 
Player: "I didn't want to kill him, just hurt him." 
GM: "Okay. He goes down with an automatic crit. Go ahead and roll for the crit, and then narrate it for me." 

The main argument I see here regarding 'player agency' is this... roleplaying games in general gear a player towards a certain order of operations. This has nothing to do with whether the player should have fired the shot in the first place, just my take on the actions as presented.
 
Declare general intent: "I will shoot him" Initiative: "Awesome, he wasn't expecting me to draw down!" Declare specific intent: "Gonna use stun!" Roll for action: "Suck space taser, jerk!" Result: "Woo, look at him twitch!"  
I wasn't at the gaming table, but the argument presented HERE goes something like this...
 
Declare general intent: "I will shoot him" Skipped Skipped Skipped Result: "Your target has died of laser dysentery. You are a horrible person." Player: "Wait, what!?"  
Basically, what we have here, is a failure to communicate. The player declared a general action, and the GM presumed the method the character wanted to take to do it. The player did not lay out all of the details of his plan in his initial statement, leaving room for misinterpretation. This works fine in DnD style games where it doesn't matter, but this is touted as a narrative system, and the narrative got skipped.
 
Anyway, sorry if I stirred the pot, my intent isn't to do so... just from my perspective, it looks like the issue is being circled and not met head on.

Something I've had (and still have to) come to terms with is that not every player/GM defines every choice in the same manner. I would say most actions taken in character seem perfectly reasonable to the person controlling said character at the time. Sometimes, these a character's actions can generate a, "WTF?!?" from one or more other the other people involved in the game. Often, the person performing said action doesn't understand why anyone else believes what their character is doing is ridiculous, because in their head, this action already passed the, "Is this stupid, or not?" mental certification process.
 
In the example of this post, it appears the player believed shooting someone in a bar over an insult was an acceptable way for their character to react. They announced a declaration to attack, and even began assembling an initiative pool. The GM seems to have taken this as a completely unreasonable reaction, and stated that the the shot killed the dude in the bar.
 
Was this the right thing to do? I don't know. I wasn't involved.
 
I think the big takeaway for anyone reading this topic is that sometimes players/GMs will do stupid things. Often, I find people make these stupid choices because not enough information was given when the GM set the scene, or when a player describes what their intentions are. When situations like this occur, a simple time-out and OOC, "Wait, what do you intend for that to accomplish?" is all it takes to keep these events from spiraling out of control. And this system has a built in mechanic for handling narrative retcons/after-the-facts/Oh I forgot to mention that/By the way.../You get a feeling that doesn't seem like a good idea/etc. They're called destiny points.
 
TL;DR: A little intent clarification goes a loooooong way.

That depends entirely on how you do it.
 
The player was clearly not expecting or desiring this outcome, and he was certainly not in sync with the GM's mindset. 
 
However, the moment the GM set the tone as adversarial ("then you shouldn't have shot him, should you?"), it became clear that what the player wanted, or what he did, no longer mattered.  It is a fine line to walk between "justifiable consequence" and "jerk move".  That line is easy to cross when you're a GM and you clearly act to teach a player a lesson.
 
While I have never been in exactly this situation, as a player I have certainly been in similar situations.  I state an intention, or an action, and the GM takes it away from me in some fashion.  That's usually only a problem if its done in an adversarial or unpleasant manner, but its always disconcerting to some extent. 

Mind you, I still think that the GM handled it poorly. I would have done something like this:
 
"The guy at the other end of the bar calls you a 'rootie poo candy ass'."
 
"What the? I shoot him!"
 
"The band stops playing as you whip out your blaster and gun the guy down"
 
"Hey! Wait a sec - I just wanted to shoot him in the leg"
 
*shrug* "Okay, you kneecap the guy and turn back to your drink."
 
Yeah, the player may not have been clear on the outset, but I'm willing to work with them and craft what they had in mind to further the story. Small do-overs like that? No big deal, it keeps everyone from looking like a heavy handed douchenugget and makes sure everyone is still having fun.

Pretty much this.
 
Rolling initiative tends to take me out of the RP. And frankly, I don't see the point vs "movie extras" like the one described in the OP. It's the equivalent of a lvl 10 character in Pathfinder/DnD wanting to stab a single goblin. I'd rather save the time of rolling initiative and cut to the chase. The goblin's going to lose, let's continue the story and set the mechanics aside.
 
 
With that being said, I probably would have retconned the call and said "Oh. you meant to stun him. Okay he's stunned, but for future reference, let's be more specific". I feel, it's the most fair on both sides, and will help keep the game and story moving.

I don't know if this fits the bill but, from page 9 of the EotE rulebook:
"While this rule book provides specific rules on how to resolve actions, the game relies heavily on both the Game Master and the players to use their imagination -tempered with common sense - to explain what happens."

Yet you keep harping on this issue with out really looking at what it would take to get all of those ranks in Parry and Reflect. With out looking at the whole process for getting a crazy amount of Parry and reflect you can't figure out if it is an issue. From what I can see and have experienced it takes a crazy amount of XP to go tree hopping in search of 2 talents. So I don't think anyone is really going to do so. By the time they have moved on to their 4 or 5th lightsaber form tree they will have an insane number of XP.  As it makes sense to get all the talents you want in a tree before moving on. Which likely means buying dedication the ranks in parry and reflect and likely the couple signature moves from that tree. Which is what our point is. There is no need to cap the talent because it takes a lot of xp to hop the trees.. 
for example.
Guardian with Peacekeeper and soresu defender to start
115 exp over starting to get 4 ranks parry and 3 ranks reflect and improved reflect and parry
285 beyond start to get Ataru striker for 3 ranks in parry and 2 ranks in reflect which takes you to 7 parry and 5 reflect
450 beyond start for shien expert for 2 ranks of parry and 3 ranks of reflect and supreme reflect which takes you to 9 parry and 8 reflect
690 beyond start to get Shii-cho knight for 4 more ranks of parry for a total of 13 parry and 8 reflect
870 beyond start to get Makashi duelist for 5 more ranks of parry for a total of 17 parry and 8 reflect
1065 beyond start to get Niman disciple for 3 more ranks of parry and 3 more reflect for 20 parry and 11 reflect
This is just buying reflect and parry and what is required to get to those instances. No more. But i don't know anyone who operates that way as the first tree was 20xp the second tree was 40xp the third was 50xp then 60xp then 70xp then 80xp so 320xp just for the trees themselves. 
 

I see armchair directing, writing and critisizing on both sides and can find points on both sides I can agree and disagree with. Too much of the analysis reminds me of high school english and Shakespeare. Overdone to the point where it can wreck it for me. So most I ignore. My stick of measurement for any movie for me is whether or not I enjoyed it and whether it has rewatchability. The Force Awakens has both. Have I seen the story before? Lots. As long as I enjoyed my time in the theater it is money well spent. At the end of the day it was a great addition to the Star Wars mythos.