#she should've been born with it but for whatever reason just had been weak enough in it that no one noticed it or something

[antianakin]

Had a thought, I think what's bothering a lot of people about recent Force stuff is that Filoni/new shows are treating the Force like a "soft magic" system. As in it's flexible to whatever the plot is and the few rules can change. Vs the more solid "hard magic" system the original stuff operates on. Only certain people have it, there's established things it can do, and it's main point of flexibility is that if you don't think you can do a thing with the Force, you can't.

Like movies/clone wars/even Rebels establishes that having the Force is an innate thing and while non Force users can "hear" the Force (various other practices we see like Chirrut) they can't utilize it. That there's certain abilities are things everyone has and more rare abilities exist but don't seem to be learned (at least not easily). I'm even willing to say Force Healing works in the og system set up in that it's a rare ability and it takes energy. You can't bring someone back from the brink of death without killing yourself or someone else.

But things like Sabine suddenly able to use the Force or Ahsoka able to use abilities out of nowhere and established to be innate and rare basically throws the hard rules out and gives it a confusing inconsistency that just makes it unenjoyable.

I think the problem is, in part, that canon itself treats the Force as both soft AND hard, depending on what aspect you're talking about, because Star Wars runs on Rule of Cool sort-of above and beyond anything else sometimes. For example, the Force Ghosts. Even within the original trilogy, the implications about how the Ghosts work seems to change from ANH to ROTJ, and then you get into the prequels and TCW and the sequels and now the Mandoverse and the Ghosts are just... wackier and wackier every time. There are NO RULES for the Force Ghosts beyond that the person ghosting should be definitively dead, not a Sith when they died, and they should look bluish. Like that's... really it. Beyond that, everyone seems to do whatever the fuck they want with it and they always have, even Lucas himself.

And then you have other things that seem to have remained fairly static this entire time even if they went unsaid, like who is capable of wielding the Force and who isn't, whether it's something you're born with or just something some people can learn easier than others. Up until the Ahsoka show, everybody seemed to agree on this one, so even though it's never been outright stated in canon that you HAVE to be born with the ability to wield the Force or you'll never be able to, it's just a generally accepted part of the worldbuilding and one that a LOT of the character narratives sort-of rely on. BUT, because it's never been outright stated and OTHER elements of the Force and how it's used can be pretty "soft magic", I suppose it's not shocking that eventually someone would try to switch this one up. It's infuriating and it's bad writing just because what little we DO know about it is so important to how these storylines go, but it's not shocking.

It's not like I hate "soft magic" systems in general, but in a lot of those stories, how the magic WORKS isn't actually important to the story being told most of the time. Like in Lord of the Rings, how Gandalf can do magic is completely irrelevant to the themes and messages sent through the story of Frodo and the Ring and the Fellowship. It doesn't MATTER.

But in Star Wars, the way the Force works is baked into the themes and messages of the whole ass story. What darkness is, where it comes from, what balance means and how it can be achieved, all of this is VITAL to the story being told throughout the first six films. And so a lot of the little stuff that gets added to the overall "how the Force works" stuff (psychometry, midichlorians, etc) should all sort-of work within those overall themes already set up. Midichlorians are important because Anakin is DEMONSTRABLY super powerful, more than anybody else in history, and it DOESN'T MATTER. He's literally MEASURABLY more powerful than anybody else and he still fails to do anything he actually wants to do. His power makes it so that his choices change the fate of an entire galaxy, but they're also completely useless in any way that actually matters to him. The fact that they can measure his power helps that message get across. Psychometry takes a lot of the stuff about how the Force allows you to dial into the emotions of other people and just takes it up an extra notch to really hammer home some of those themes about control over your own power and being connected to the world around you.

So Star Wars, in many ways, DOES have a "soft" magic system, it always has, but the things that are changed or added to it SHOULD generally still fit within the overall themes and messages that Star Wars has set up prior to this. Sabine being Force sensitive randomly very explicitly goes AGAINST all of these themes and messages and that's why it sucks. Changing the system so that literally ANYBODY could have the Force if they just worked hard enough at it (and having Sabine gain her ability to wield it only when she FEELS the most emotions as opposed to when she CONTROLS her emotions the best) completely fucks up a lot of the narratives for other characters. What makes Luke so special if literally ANYBODY could have just learned to do what he did, but apparently they just weren't trying hard enough? If Ahsoka felt this way this entire time why wasn't she training up TONS of people in the Rebellion to utilize the Force, why was she HOBBLING the Rebellion by keeping this from them? It's just... SO so stupid in so many ways. Why does Filoni seem to think that fans want the space wizards to be LESS special? It's ridiculous and it's insulting.

I think that at this point we're also just VERY tired of Filoni's blatant favoritism for his own characters and the ways he very intentionally will bash other characters in order to lift up his own faves, and quite honestly THAT'S what pisses me off the most about the Ahsoka show. Sabine and Ahsoka can't be special on their own, they HAVE to call the prequels Jedi failures because they were elitist in order to make Sabine and Ahsoka seem like they're so much better and more enlightened than those OTHER Jedi. And that honestly just stinks of a lack of imagination on Filoni's part. If he can't figure out how to make these characters feel special without tearing down other characters in this franchise to do it, then maybe he's just not that good of a fucking writer to begin with.

So while I'm not PERSONALLY a fan of the way the Force is often very "soft" in the way it's written, that doesn't make it bad in and of itself, but Filoni (and the Mandoverse in general, but mostly Filoni) feels like he's actively flipping the bird at prior accepted assumptions about the worldbuilding and the way those things really helped build the NARRATIVE just because he wants to insist that HIS characters are NOT IRRELEVANT and are in fact more important and cooler than everybody else. When I consume a Star Wars story, I'm EXPECTING something about how it's better to accept and acknowledge your own darkness so you can let it go and control it rather than letting it control you. I'm EXPECTING something about being selfless and compassionate over being selfish and greedy. I'm EXPECTING something about how destiny exists but it isn't everything and your choices still MATTER (both good and bad). And that's just... not what Filoni gave me. The things he changed DON'T suit the narrative of Star Wars, regardless of whether the Force is a soft magic system or not.

[shoecrabs]

HoO things I have headcanoned/au'ed for my canon divergent version of the story (most take Percy and Annabeth out of the story lol):

Leo and Piper meeting before the Wilderness School. They became begrudging allies to friends while hanging out in the streets, causing mild vandalism, and shoplifting chocolate. turns out a born-to-be-public speaker with a healthy hatred for authority and a hyperactive homeless kid with an arsenal of scrap metal make an incredible duo against police

They were both worried about going M.I.A since they had no proper way to call eachother before being spontaneously thrown into the Wilderness School. then they got excited that they ended up together! Man, what luck is that :D (it was Hera lmao)

Piper met Aphrodite on Cyprus and finally had a chat one-to-one about everything and her place amongst the team

although Lupa raised Jason like a pup, she wouldn't let him forget just how human he still was. She'd always tell him to straighten up, or to use his hands rather than just teeth. She'd teach him to skin animals by himself with sharp stones. Still, she warned him not to be too human, too mortal. "human weaknesses" such as crying would not be tolerated.

Jason then had to relearn how to be human by trying to copy the members of Camp and interpreted them how Lupa taught him. The demigods didn't help him as much as they would've due to his parentage, so he was always awkwardly trying to fit in and adapt. He spent ages trying to associate names to facial expressions and it made him upset realising he didn't recognise that many anymore

Hazel and Gaia almost always fought for control over the earth. Hazel eventually pried the land out of Gaia's control just long enough for the others to escape a collapsing cavern & teams up with Piper's charmspeak with her power over the Mist

HAZEL CONTROLS OPALISED FOSSILS. I think she should have gotten the chance to summon opalised skeletons, especially since they were by the sea a lot of the time

Frank was always clumsy because his body was always twitching to shapeshift. Once he unlocked his shapeshifting, he'd instinctively transform to continue his stride. when not paying attention or too tired, he'd still stumble and trip

Frank and Hazel took over when Percy and Annabeth (without them it'd probably be Leo) fell into Tartarus. Jason advised them, but was glad at not needing to lead

All of them (again, without percabeth) learnt at least one way of supporting the ship when Leo wasn't available or too exhausted! Jason would send winds into the sails and navigate at air, Piper learnt a few of the controls and which ones opened up to secret storage and etc, Hazel was in charge of retrieving metal and noticing damages to the structure of machines, and Frank was the main strategist that ended up being really good with the ballistae. They still couldn't match up to Leo, but they managed to get the ship stumbling to its destination

Jason doesn't give Frank Praetorship until the final fight against Gaia, where the Romans have a chance to agree or disagree and all that, but he takes the position of team leader after Jason steps down (Hazel is his second in command + co-leader)

more time between books, arching within 2 years at least

also a possibly hot take: the sacrifices should've been Jason and either Piper or Hazel cause they have more thematic weight to them other than "they're the oldest and most annoying" or whatever the original reason was