#the will of the force

[spiderbae2319]

Qui-Gon smoking a blunt while Anakin murders younglings: It’s the will of the force

[inklesspen]

A thing you see a lot in Star Wars material is "The Will of the Force". It's simply taken for granted a lot of the time. Oh, Jedi can argue about what the Will of the Force is in a particular situation, but nobody (except Kreia, I suppose) is ever seriously arguing that maybe the Will of the Force shouldn't automatically be obeyed. My guess is that this has something to do with how the Will of the Force is often synonymous with the Direction of the Plot. It's certainly convenient, but it raises ethical issues with which Star Wars rarely if ever bothers to engage.

“Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”

I was thinking about how you can have a Jedi take direction from the Force in a way that's generally reliable (after accounting for individual error), but which doesn't require setting the Force up as a moral authority, and I came up with this:

To begin, let‘s suppose that part of how the Force interacts with sapient beings is that when you make choices — when you settle on an intent — that creates a sort of “status effect” in your connection to the Force. Even if you have no idea how to wield the Force, you‘re still leaking out that intent. And part of what a Force adept can do is basically query the intent states of sapient beings in her vicinity. This is generally done at a subconscious level. A Jedi wants to be able to intervene in unjust situations? Well, then her connection to the Force is basically running a query across all the nearby Intents, looking for someone Intending to do unwarranted harm (according to the Jedi‘s moral guidelines). This is less a "configure search agent, send it to search the net, read results later" scenario like we‘d see with technology and more like a constant feedback loop between the Jedi‘s moral instincts and the collective Force auras of everyone in town. And this produces what the Jedi senses as "the Will of the Force". (We can also say it‘s slightly acausal, allowing Jedi to react to Intents that haven‘t actually been formed yet.) But the same function that queries Intents can also “broadcast”, which is how Obi-Wan mind-tricks the stormtroopers, and part of how Battle Meditation probably works, and so on.

He called upon the Force, gathering it to himself and wrapping himself within it. He breathed it in and held it whirling inside his heart, clenching down upon it until he could feel the spin of the galaxy around him. Until he became the axis of the Universe. This was the real power of the dark side, the power he had suspected even as a boy, had sought through his long life until Darth Sidious had shown him that it had been his all along. The dark side didn’t bring him to the center of the universe. It made him the center. He drew power into his innermost being until the Force itself existed only to serve his will.

The Sith warrior, of course, has other priorities. He will certainly want to keep abreast of certain Intents in the Force, but he‘s doing a lot more spamming of his own Intent upon others. It won‘t always work, but he only has to overpower someone once, right?

Which brings me to a thing that I‘m pretty sure is just fanon — the idea that beskar‘gam can protect a mando‘ad‘s mind from jetii tricks (or, that someone wearing real Mandalorian armor is effectively a void in the Force). If this is true, then someone wearing beskar‘gam isn‘t radiating their Intent into the Force like everyone else does, though a Jedi can still sense them, if imperfectly, by the way their actions influence other people‘s Intents. Still, if you have to go up against a Force adept it‘s worth it to wear beskar if you can, because it effectively removes their precognitive sense; they can‘t react to your Intents until you‘ve acted on them in a way others can see.

So what about droids? There‘s a lot of stuff in the Clone Wars show about the battle droids being fully sapient, with feelings and fears and individualized reactions. But they‘re still networked, still driven remotely.

And that‘s because, yes, a droid can have an Intent in the Force too. Not every droid; not the little mouse droids, or at least they only have small, simple Intents. But a droid with a complex personality, like Artoo? Sure thing. He presents in the Force like any other living being. And the battle droids are getting up there in complexity.

So what do you think happens when a droid has an Intent aura, but doesn‘t do what that Intent would suggest? When a droid wants to do anything other than run headlong at the lightsaber-wielding maniac and the legion of clone troopers, but is forced to do so anyway by its programming?

I think the result is a lot of Jedi being badly served by their instincts. They know what the droid wants to do, and they want to react to what the droid wants to do, but the droid doesn‘t actually do that thing, so they have to force themselves not to react that way. They have to force themselves not to pay attention to “the Will of the Force”. And doesn‘t that sound just like something Palpatine and Dooku would want for them? The better they get at killing droid armies, the worse they get at being Jedi.

[jiminthestreets-bonesinthesheets]

omg the amount of research I have had to do for the last few chapters of The Will of the Force, has been crazy! If I had as much motivation for my original novel as I did for this Obikin fanfiction... then my novel would be finished lmao hehehe, no regrets

[duckysprouts]

i need everyone to understand the poetry of curly turning a blind eye to anya’s suffering only to be robbed of his autonomy and voice as she was and then forced to observe jimmy’s crimes and the abuse of his own body

[inkskinned]

it's extremely critical that you see the photo of the perp walk for luigi mangione as being propaganda. i've seen so many people wave it off and instead fawn over his looks. and trust me, i know it ended up being kind of pathetic and weird - but please don't brush it off as a "modelling opportunity" for him. it's a fucking terrifying message the police are sending.

i want to make a few comparisons here, in case you're not from the US or familiar with why the perp walk thing is something to pay attention to. just to set the groundwork for why this is a purposeful, unusual, and cruel act by the nyc police - for why this is not a common occurrence and for why that matters.

the prosecution alleges the show of force is due to the charge of "terrorism." for comparison, in june 2015, tsarnaev was found guilty for the boston marathon bombing, which killed 3 people and injured hundreds. his actions are considered to be an act of domestic terrorism. i have spent the last hour looking through google for pictures of similar to mangione's perp walk - and so far, i have found zero. i also just do not personally remember a moment like that, despite living in boston at the time.

they allege that luigi is a stone-cold killer who carried out a longterm plan, making him particularly dangerous. again for comparison: in nyc, recently cory martin was found guilty of the killing of brandy odom. the murder was planned and premeditated to steal insurance money. and yet no staged perp walk. why didn't her life matter enough for a "show of force"?

but mangione gets paraded by a veritable army of police officers as if he is a rabid animal. for a single citizen who allegedly killed one other single citizen, the "largest perp walk ever" occurs.

so what is the "strong message" that the mayor and the police were trying to send here? the mayor speaks as if mangione is already convicted of terrorism. there is a very thin number of people who feel threatened by the CEO's death. none of us felt like mangione needs to be under massive armed guard.

the message is that you shouldn't resist. they are trying to "make an example" of him - that if you behave badly and kill a single rich person, you'll be treated as if you killed hundreds of people. you will be treated worse than a man who was found guilty of terrorism. you will be considered guilty without trial. the message is that the rich are a protected class, and you cannot touch them without massive punishment. they are trying to prevent a revolution by showing dominance and force against you.

the message is that the police are a puppet of the wealthy and that the law is not equally applied across class disparity. it is "some are more equal than others." it is "one life is more precious than another."

the show of force wasn't for luigi. it was for us. it was a warning. they are trying to remind us who is really in control.

[retquits]

there is something so crazy and powerful about having art of your oc that was made by anyone other than yourself. like oh my god you actually exist outside of my own brain that's WILD

[bonesandthebees]

one of the most infuriating things about becoming an adult is when you realize that it actually is 10x easier to solve problems by making a phone call vs literally any other communication method

[compassionatereminders]

The worst thing is that there is so much potential for exploring the horror of psych wards from the angle of medical abuse, ableism, forced treatment/drugging, loss of autonomy, power imbalance, demonization, dehumanization, etc, and YET the horror genre keeps defaulting to "insane asylums and psych wards are scary because there are mentally ill people in there"

[boxmakesart]

Eldritch Miku omgggg

[yuis-art]

“I’m just gettin’ started bub. ⭐️”

Haven’t posted in a while! BUT I SAW DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE YIPPE!! ⭐️

[mearchy]

my favorite genre of fictional character is like "i am terrifying to almost everyone, i'm very good at killing, i can endure anything, i've become exceptionally good at playing into my reputation, and if you try to give me positive social interaction i will react with confusion and cower in a corner like an abused animal. and i may try to shoot you. but there is also a chance i may imprint on you like a feral dog receiving its first loving touch! good luck."

[yourfavecharacterisqueer]

hypothetical scenario for you all: the real king arthur returns. you meet him and you welcome him into your home. what is the first thing you do with him? keep in mind, this is a man from the 500s (he died in 542), and you are from the 21st century (2024).

[mychemicalbrromance]

Guys ive been reading peak

[domesticatedmeatpig]

[bakedbeanchan]

random fire nation diplomat #492 will never understand the complex and fucked up relationship between the water siblings like I do 🙄